


The Hand of the Devil

by ofmercia



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Action, Action & Romance, Arthur's Journal, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Damage, Eventual Romance, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hand Touching, High Honor Arthur Morgan, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, Love Affair, Major Character Injury, Mental Health Issues, Mutual Attraction, Mutual Pining, Slight Canon Divergence, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Touch-Starved, Universe Alteration, Unresolved Sexual Tension, no beta we die like men, secret secrets, warning: depression
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:15:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26954188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofmercia/pseuds/ofmercia
Summary: Ambushed by O'Driscolls and far from the gang, Arthur Morgan is saved from the brink of death by a solitary woman living in the mountains. Their meeting marks the unravelling of both their lives and things go from bad to worse on all sides as Arthur begins to witness the collapse of the gang and Mrs. Everly seeks out revenge for her ruined family. Redemption may be out of reach for both of them, or they could find it together. Time will tell.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Original Female Character(s), Mary Gillis Linton/Arthur Morgan
Comments: 20
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Well I am Death none can excel  
>  I'll open the door to Heaven or Hell  
> O Death, someone would pray,  
> Could you wait to call me another day?_  
>  \- O Death, American folk song

In hindsight it was the perfect bottleneck for an ambush.

Arthur Morgan didn’t have all that much time to consider it fully, but as he fired off a few rounds to cover his dash to a boulder he made note of the fact. Trees prickled the skyline atop the crests on either side, jutting rock overhanging enough to cast shadows as black as pitch all across the muddy trail. Perfect for covering an approach. Should’ve known a bunch of low-down scum like the O’Driscoll Boys would take advantage of the narrowing path and the rising hillocks hemming it in. If he was going to ambush someone, this would be the place to do it. Suppose that made him scum, too.

Only thing he couldn’t fathom was why the O’Driscolls were here in the first place. Northern New Hanover, far as he knew, hadn’t yet been touched by neither of them. They were far too concerned with their spat further south, running around Blackwater and the like. Arthur was only so far north on account of scouting for Hosea, looking for a place they could run to should things turn sour. Yet here they were again.

Goddamn O’Driscolls. Turning up everywhere. Like roaches.

He pushed his back against the hard rock of the boulder, pressing himself flat as he could. There was too many of them. Leaning out to shoot at the cadre ahead of him he counted maybe four and a couple more to the sides. Arthur raised his six shooter and got one of them in the eye and a second in the leg before he ducked back down. Bullets pinged off the rock, one ricochet took his hat clean off and he flinched down tighter.

One, two, three men down in quick succession.

Thick screams of pain peppered the night.

Sweat rolled down his neck, soaking his shirt collar. Too damn many of them. Arthur reloaded fast as he could, fingers deft with the bullets as he slid them into the barrel. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a man creeping along the overhang; it was up on his right, he needed to take the man out before he got close enough to fire, from up there he’d be in line to put a bullet in the back of Arthur’s head in a matter of feet and inches.

He slammed the barrel home and swung his arm up, squeezing the trigger twice in. Blood sprayed black in the crisp night air, the bullet tearing through the O’Driscoll boy’s neck. Instead of toppling off the ledge he fell forwards and stopped, caught up in the undergrowth, his arms swinging down past his head, a reverse hanged man. 

It was the perfect bottle neck for an ambush. Arthur was still trying to deal with the men ahead of him when two rushed him from behind. With his arm outstretched to pick off the man above and in front of him he was exposed and white fire ignited in his ribs and back.

He twisted round, firing with his off-hand under his own arm. One shattered jaw, one belly-shot. One road full of corpses.

There was a moment of stillness. Quiet and gun smoke hung in the air.

Arthur fell against the boulder and then to his knee, in the dirt. He was breathing hard, felt the air rush out of his body hot and enter it cold. He had dropped the gun from his left hand and pressed his palm to his right side where he felt the burning. When he brought it round to look, he found it slick and red. Bad. That was bad. Only thing for it was to get on his horse and get to help fast as he could. ‘Fore he bled out. Arthur tried to whistle for Boadicea but it came out reedy and weak and he bit the sound off with a curse as he tried to stand.

His legs were shaking and would not bear his weight.

He had been shot a couple times, grazed mostly, but he had never taken a round badly enough to immobilise him and he refused, absolutely, to let this change that record. What he was going to do was get his damn self together, get on his horse, and get back to the gang. Even if he had to stick a hot poker in the bullet hole himself. Even if he had to crawl through this damn mud and over O’Driscoll bodies to get there, he would get there. Only his body didn’t seem to be in much agreement with him. His hands felt cold, his shirt was wet, blood was near pouring out of him, like a jug with a crack in the bottom. He started to crawl. He tried to whistle again, calling out for his horse. Everything started to get real dark. The moon was turning shy, hiding herself behind clouds. Arthur crawled until his arms, trembling as they were, wouldn’t hold him up no more.

Time stretched out, molasses thick, as he lay in the mud.

Seemed a lousy place to die, bleeding into the dirt in the cold north, but there he was.

He turned his head what little way he could; O’Driscoll bodies lay in dark humps on the path behind him, one of them still dangling from the rocky outcropping, his rifle swinging below his body by the shoulder strap. A lousy place to die, but at least he was taking some of the enemy with him. His eyes grew heavier each time he blinked, the darkness soothing and sweet, until they closed and wouldn’t open again.

Not even for the golden glow of lamplight which lit the path moments later.

* * *

It was late to be riding alone in the mountains, at least that was what the man in the general store had told her with a queer look in his eye. Constance Everly had thanked him kindly for his concern but left all the same; there was no use hanging around in Annesburg and she didn’t much fancy sleeping in a flea-ridden bed rented from the gunsmith. Irony was not with her when she heard gun shots out on the trail, though. Tugging at the reins she pulled her horse to a stop, clucking her tongue with a low murmur to quiet the animal down.

Sound was hard to pin down in the mountains; it bounced off the rocks, echoed through the trees. It was hard to judge how far ahead of her the shooting was taking place. Constance sat still on the bench of the wagon for a long moment as the firing continued but it neither seemed to grow closer nor farther from her. She doused the lantern hanging next to her on the wagon bench with her fingertips and waited, eyes skimming the darkness warily. It was too loud to be the Murfree Brood and also too quiet, too much gunfire and not enough screaming. No animal sounds, probably not a bear attack or the like. Frowning, she sat in the dark and waited a few minutes more, until it was quiet. Not knowing was more concerning to her than anything, at least if she knew whether it was bandit or beast she could choose what to do next. There was no other route up the hillside and into the mountains, she needed to get home with her cargo and her purse intact, not to mention her horse.

That flea-ridden bed did not seem so terrible to her now.

Constance counted to one hundred. Then she moved, giving her horse a gentle tap with leather to get him moving at a slow pace.

They rolled over the uneven terrain cautiously; the path narrowed ahead of her and she knew it was common for people to get caught or stuck, robbed or murdered, on narrow and remote roads. Her hands were steady but she was biting her lips, wondering which of the four would be her fate, as she guided the wagon around a bend and came to the bottleneck. There, she swiftly halted the wagon again. Her palms turned clammy on the reins. 

Corpses.

Perhaps a dozen, it was hard to make them out. She looked up to the trees, twisted around to look behind her. No movement. Not a shadow or a shape.

Constance lit the lantern again and clambered down from her seat with it. Carrying her skirts in one hand she took her light over to the nearest corpse. They didn’t look like Murfrees; they wore coats and boots, their weapons looked mostly clean, glittering in the muck as she crossed the path. She saw green waistcoats and kerchiefs here and there. A broken pocket watch crunched under her boot, a packet of cigarettes had scattered across the ground, a few of them floating in a shallow puddle. Constance looked down into it. Then she bent forwards, holding the lantern closer to the ground; red swirls mixed with the grubby water. The whole path was stained garnet, it was dripping from the overhang where a body was slumped forwards in perpetual freefall. That was the moment she heard it; she would reflect later. That precise moment as she watched globs of blood drip from the dead man to the ground was when she heard the death rattles of a corpse behind a boulder.

Perhaps it was curiosity that made her investigate further, a morbid sense of interest in the last moments of a dirty rotten scoundrel. Perhaps it was a death wish being willed into fruition. It hardly mattered why she went around the rock to see who it was dying in the dirt, only that she did it. Constance found a man lying on his back, just like half the others, but he was moving. His chest expanded and then collapsed under his thin red shirt. His face was turned towards her but it was slack, pallid. She should leave him to die. That was what she should do. She didn’t know these men; she didn’t know which were good and which were bad or if any of them were neither. It wasn’t her business. But she crouched down and touched the back of her fingers to his cheek all the same. She still raised her lantern over him to look at the bullet holes in his shoulder and side. She still tugged at the collar of his shirt to take a look where she could see blood blooming. It turned out his shirt was blue, not red. Not a good sign.

He was still warm. Barely. Still breathing. Just.

She should leave him to die, but she brought the wagon down the path, rolling a corpse out of her way with her boot so that the wagon wheels could pass. Even though she knew she should leave him to die she hung her lantern on the wagon again and hoisted him into the back. He made low groaning sounds as she dragged him up over the lip, but didn’t wake. Even though she knew it would be wiser and smarter to leave him to die with the rest of them, she observed herself going through considerable effort to get a man nearly twice her size out of the mire and into safety.

Crouching over him in the back of the wagon wearing a grim frown, she threw her coat over him, tucked it under his shoulders. At any moment he might stop breathing. At any moment, she supposed, she might come to her senses and roll him out of the wagon and back into the dirt, but she didn’t. She got back into the driving seat and urged the stallion onwards. It felt wrong to do nothing, despite all the ways she knew that doing nothing was a smarter choice. Constance couldn’t do nothing, she felt compelled by forces unseen to do _something._

Even if that something was carting a body to her home for burial.

If nothing else, Cedar Fell was a nice spot for a grave. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may notice that Constance bears some resemblance to Charlotte Balfour so here is my short PSA: I love Charlotte, her side missions for Arthur are so key to his character arc that I a) didn't want to alter her to fit the ideas I had for Constance because that might undermine Charlotte's actual purpose in the narrative from the game, or b) have both Charlotte and Constance populate the world at the same time, because that would unfairly diminish what is essential in her presence towards the climax of the game's story. Charlotte and WIllard's Rest were more of a jumping off point for me, I felt like I had ideas I wanted to explore with a similar feeling of an isolated cabin and a woman trying to survive out there alone. So Charlotte stans please know; I am one of you, and maybe one day I'll feel prepared enough to do her justice in a series of her own! Arthur/Charlotte lives on x


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Always a riddle in the world she said  
>  Always a riddle inside my head  
> Always a thing of wonder  
> The way we come to be_  
>  \- In Dreams, Ben Howard

Grey dawn filtered in under the door, inching from behind the shutters, when he woke. Arthur’s eyes opened slow. The shapes around him came into gradual focus but as he began to sit up, confused, a pain in his shoulder made them blur again. He stopped hard, raised his hand to the sore spot to find a wad of cloth there, wrapped tightly around his shoulder and under his arm, across his chest, and tied tight. The familiar burning sensation of a gunshot dissolved what was left of his daze and he looked around more carefully. He was lying by a dying fire. In a cabin. There was a woman sitting nearby. She was resting her cheek against her knuckles, eyes closed. One of his own guns in her lap. He could see that her fine sleeves were rolled to the elbows and that there was blood streaking her pale skin. Her lips were parted and she breathed softly. Apparently, he had been delivered to a nurse of some fashion. That hardly reassured him any, he didn’t know where he was or what had happened immediately after finding himself ambushed by O’Driscolls. Could be they had brought him here. Could be she was one of them.

Best to get up and go. Shirt or no shirt.

Arthur started to push himself up with his good arm. Beneath him a floorboard creaked and though he stopped short it was too late. The noise roused the brunette in her seat and she started into wakefulness, snatching the gun from her leg and aiming it at him with a heavy _clunk_.

“Now, hold on there ma’am. No need for that.”

The gun stayed poised at his head but Arthur could see her arm quaking. Not an O’Driscoll then, they wouldn’t have left him alone with little more than a waif and out of fetters, too.

“I ain’t tryin’ nothin’, just want to get on.”

“Can’t be too careful,” she answered. Her accent was a cold, tart, English. Fancy.

“What, you save me just to shoot me?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Slowly, she rose from the armchair and took a step back, the gun trained on him all the while. Arthur might not have been at his best, his head was thick and his vision still swam some, but it was just clear enough to see that she was tired and he didn’t think her reflexes would be good enough to stop him if he really wanted to get that gun off her. Then again, he didn’t fancy risking another bullet hole.

“Keep hold on the gun if it makes you feel better, but I ain’t in much of a condition to be robbin’ you.”

“You’re not in much of a condition at all.”

“No, suppose I ain’t.”

They were both silent. There was flint in her eyes, a resolve he both recognised and feared a little. Arthur knew that look well, he’d seen it in plenty of men and women alike. He was sure he’d worn it plenty himself.

“Found me in the road?”

She nodded. “With a lot of other men.”

“Why’d you save me? Why not one of them others?”

“You were breathing. They weren’t.”

“That ain’t what I mean, ma’am.”

It seemed she was turning his words over in her mind; she was biting her lips together into a thin, worrisome line. “It was the Christian thing to do. Should I have left you to die?”

Arthur looked from his gun to her face and shrugged his good shoulder, “Maybe.”

The woman held the gun steady a moment longer and then lowered it like it suddenly weighed ten times more. She dropped it onto the seat of the chair she had been sitting in, well within his reach. Arthur didn’t pick it up. Didn’t seem like there was much need to be armed now that she was empty handed. He watched as she turned away and crossed the cottage to the kitchen area. Only then did he begin to get up again, sitting and then standing. His whole body ached, head to toe. When he stretched some, testing his bad side where the bandages were, there was a burn in his muscle and a pop in his bones, kinks working themselves free. Could feel all his fingers though, hand made a fist just fine and that was pretty much all he needed.

The clattering of plates made him look up again. The woman was setting a table; knives and forks, cups, she placed a loaf of bread on a wooden platter in the middle and pulled a cloth off of the top of it. Arthur looked around again, properly, now that he was standing to his full height: There was a mantle above the fire, pictures in frames, a clock, and a vase of dried flowers. Not dry. Dead. Who kept dead flowers? Bloody scraps of cloth littered the floor, there was a wooden sled shoved to the side, and the furniture which he presumed was usually neatly arranged around the fireplace was all at angles. The whole place was in disarray.

“You shouldn’t move too fast,” she said. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“And a good deal of it on your floor.”

When she made no comment, he moved a few tender paces towards where she was lighting the stove to make coffee. He could see the tin on the surface beside her, a little brass looking coffee pot, too. She looked over her shoulder at him as he approached. Her eyes were wide and dark.

“You should eat something before you go.”

“Oh no, you don’t have to do that ma’am, I can see I overstayed my welcome. Done more than enough for me already.”

“Nonsense. I can’t have you dying out there on the trail. It would be a waste of my thread.”

Compassion at its finest.

She stood behind one of the chairs, resting her hands on it expectantly. Seemed he wasn’t getting out of the place without complying, even without the gun trained on him he felt under no small amount of duress and his confusion as to her motivations lingered.

Arthur sat down at the table. She placed a cup of coffee in front of him. He watched her from beneath low brows as she went about making breakfast.

“Were they waiting for you? Those men?”

“Don’t think so. Just lucky, I guess.” 

“Not for you.”

“No. Not for me.”

What he took to be a sceptical hum was her only answer. Didn’t seem like she was a great talker, maybe that was for the best. Arthur didn’t much want to explain who he was or who those men had been, he didn’t want to lie either, didn’t have the energy for it. Just needed to accept her hospitality as long as was right and then get going. Instead of sitting the woman started moving around, picking up after the night before. He sipped his coffee, bitter and scalding, and waited. For what, he didn’t exactly know. Creaking floorboards told him she was coming back before he saw her. She came around the table with a blanket from the back of the sofa. He watched her shake it out and then she put it around his shoulders without a word. Arthur winced. Wasn’t that he meant to, or that he was afraid or nothing, it just took him by surprise. It was kind of her, and her demeanour hadn’t seemed all that kind or warm thus far. Woman had a frost to her he couldn’t quite work out. Then again, he’d never been all that good at reading people too deep. She put a plate of food in front of him and sat down in the chair around the corner of the table, cradling her own cup of steaming coffee.

“Mrs. Everly,” she said.

“Arthur Morgan.”

She sipped her coffee.

“Your horse is outside. She followed us up the trail. Loyal beast.”

“Ah, yeah. She is that.”

“I don’t have a barn, but she’s in the stable, out of the rain.”

Arthur nodded; his mouth full. He swallowed, washed the food down with a gulp of coffee, but before he could open his mouth to thank or question the woman further, she was talking again. Arthur couldn’t say he liked the way she was watching him; she held herself with a stillness he had only observed in predators, waiting to move in for the kill. It made him wonder what she was thinking and just who exactly Mrs. Everly was. Out here, all alone. There was a ring on her finger, so she certainly seemed to be married as her introduction suggested, but there was no man in the cottage, nor had he seen a man’s coat or boots at the door. Made him wonder.

“You don’t have a badge,” she was saying.

“A badge?”

“A star. I imagine the only man who needs as many guns as you have ought to be a law man. But you’ve no badge. So, I presume you’re an outlaw of some description.”

“Of some description, ma’am.”

There was a pause. Mrs. Everly leant forwards, placing her forearms on the table.

“I don’t want any trouble, Mr. Morgan.”

“Don’t want to cause you none.”

“I’d be grateful if you would take your guns and your horse and go, when you’re ready.”

Arthur nodded, getting her meaning at the same time as not understanding what the Hell she was talking on. If she didn’t want any trouble why bother to bring him back here at all? Best way to avoid trouble would have been to leave him where she had discovered him. Wasn’t that he didn’t feel gratitude towards her, but he couldn’t see the point in rescuing a person from the kind of situation she had rescued him from if trouble was such a concern. Most folks would have let him die; of that he was fairly certain. Wasn’t sure why Mrs. Everly wasn’t most folk, that was all. He glanced at her hands around the coffee and then to her wan face; “You ain’t eating?”

“I’m not hungry.” She pressed her point; “I’ll forget I ever saw you.”

“I get your meanin’ ma’am, don’t trouble yourself.”

As she leaned back, satisfied, she let out a long sigh through her nose, her eyes trailing off across the table and onto the floor. They sat in silence once more. The fire started to make popping sounds, she must have put a fresh log onto it while she had fetched the blanket, the place started to warm up and with the food in his stomach and the coffee waking him proper, Arthur felt a little more himself again. He observed her whilst she appeared to be thinking on something far away: The material of her dress was as fancy as that accent, all dark brocade with ribbon in the edging; the lace of her under clothes that poked out from the sleeves was red, ruined most likely, he could see that she had short nails that were stained with his blood, fresh blisters shining on the creases of her knuckles. Looked like she had maybe dug a bullet out of his shoulder with her bare hands, probably closed up the holes too. Lot of effort to go to, lot of foolishness for a man she didn’t know.

“You sewed up the holes?”

“I did.”

“You a nurse?”

“Not remotely.” Arthur held her gaze until she continued. “I’m a seamstress. Sewing fabric is a little easier than flesh but the principle holds. You ought to be able to take the stitches out in a few weeks. If rot doesn’t set in.”

“Let’s hope that don’t happen.”

Silence, again. Arthur ate his breakfast and she sat fading in and out of watching him. As he was finishing up, she moved, palms on the table, pushing herself to her feet. Wary, he followed her with his eyes as she went across the room again and to a chest by the door. It wasn’t like she was doing anything so secretive, she opened it up with a thud and closed it with her boot. When she turned around, she had a pile of things in her arms; his rifles, bandolier and satchel; he saw a vest poking out and the material of a white shirt. His hat balanced on the top. Mrs. Everly brought it all to the table and set it down on the opposite end to him.

When he started to get up he had to pause, take it a little slower as the soreness in his shoulder and side seemed to be spreading; the bruises were already set and the flesh felt tender, stiffness would probably be next, he had to keep in mind to move much as he could, save himself from seizing up. Mrs. Everly was walking in a flurry of dark skirts again but only to fetch his ruined shirt from near the fire, she brought it back to him at the table.

“I tried to salvage this one but I’m afraid the stains are quite set and the holes not worth patching.” She held out the shirt to him and Arthur took it, stretching it between his hands to look at it, faded blue stained the dark brown of old blood. He gave a sigh but smiled just a little. “Once I had your horse stabled, I brought these in for you.”

Holding the blanket around his shoulders with one hand, Arthur reached out for the white shirt with his good arm, pulling it out of the pile of his things. Couldn’t see his journal in the stack, that was a relief. At that point she started to help him again and he decided not to meet her eyes: It was too hard to get the shirt on himself but while he was glad for the help, he felt ill at ease being vulnerable with a stranger. They knew each other’s names, so they weren’t strangers in that regard, but knowing all the secrets about himself he could not stop from wondering what secrets she might be hiding. Nothing added up to a number he liked and he wished he’d had the presence of mind to give her a false name at least. It hurt to slide his arm into the sleeve but he managed it with her hands guiding his wrist. She stopped short of buttoning it up for him.

Soon, she walked him to the door of the cottage, closing it behind her as they went out onto the porch. He crossed it and went down a couple steps, stopping before hitting mud. The sky was big and grey, overcast but bright, and Arthur could smell the recent rain on the mountain air. It was a nice spot. Trees to shelter the cottage, a good view of the valley below, seemed far away from anyone or anything that might be a bother. Arthur turned from the view; thumbs hooked into his gunbelt. As he did so, his eyes cast downwards, he saw yet more blood, his blood, on the boards of the porch. Seemed a damn miracle he’d pulled through. He looked up with a grimace. Mrs. Everly had her shawl wrapped around her shoulders and her arms folded around her middle. She looked pale in the morning light, an apparition. She was small, but not shy looking; there was a jut to her jaw that made him think she really might have shot him if she had felt moved to. There was something in her eyes that made him nervous. Still, he was grateful she had done what she done and he meant to be polite and show it. Hosea would chide him for being ungrateful if he didn’t at least make a try for sincerity. Dutch would know exactly what to say. In fact, Arthur was certain Dutch would’ve gotten a smile out of her, somehow. Dutch could get a smile out of anyone.

“Mrs. Everly.” He held out his hand.

She looked from his palm up to his face and unfolded her arms from around her middle. She took his hand, giving it a firm squeeze as they shook.

“Mr. Morgan.”

He didn’t let go immediately and she did not try to extricate her hand.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“You’re welcome.”

He took a pause.

“I mean it. Thank you.”

They held one another’s hand a moment longer than was necessary, a moment longer than was appropriate. His; large, warm and dirty; Hers small, pale and bloodied. Arthur felt her hand relax a little, the tiniest give in the strength of her grasp.

“Travel safely,” she said. And pulled her hand free. And took a step back.

Arthur brushed the rim of his hat with two fingers and turned to go. He saw Boadicea in the small stable and went to check her over. Just like the woman had said, she had been fed and watered and he spent a few minutes clucking at her softly, sliding his guns back into their homes and holsters. He felt eyes on his back all the while and as he led his horse out onto the flat ground, he saw Mrs. Everly was still on the porch, watching him. Motionless. Arthur gave her another nod once he was in the saddle, then he rode out.

Something made him look back only when he was among the trees and he saw her standing there, a phantasm in the blanch morning light, staring into the sky. Arthur wondered if he would ever see her again and made a note to try and take her likeness in his journal. Riding back home, sore in the shoulder and sore in the head, he wrestled with the notion of capturing a ghost on paper and concluded that, perhaps, it weren’t possible after all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Last night I dreamt I’d forgotten my name  
>  ‘Cause I’d sold my soul, but I woke just the same  
> I’m so lonely, I wish I was the moon tonight_  
>  \- I Wish I Was the Moon, Neko Case

What some might call monotony Constance called habitual. Each day began the same, the sun climbing over the mountains, burning away the crepuscular mist; birds sang, the leaves murmured in the wind, water threw itself over the lip of the fall in a constant chaotic tumble. Nature was hardly considered monotonous and it went through the same paces each day just as she did. To her thinking that was no bad thing, neither was it good. Constance rose when the light came into the cottage, she washed her face with cold water and dressed, knotted her hair back and fed her horse. Some mornings she would sit on the porch with coffee and listen to the distant rumbling of the waterfall for which Cedar Fell was named, she would pick at a handful of berries or a bit of bread and think how absolutely alone she was, far from anyone or anything that might mither her. A blessing and a curse, she supposed, as she watched a cloud emerge from a stand of evergreens and float across an unencumbered sky to disappear behind the mountain rise.

After she was finished with breakfast she went to work, sitting down to sew for some hours; shirts to sell in Annesburg. It was a cold morning so she lit the fire first and sat with her socked feet on a small stool to keep her toes warm. As she stitched, she looked at the floor every so often.

The bloodstains were gone, she had spent long enough scrubbing them away that the blisters on her knuckles had burst. Unpleasant to say the least, but not the worst thing in the world. Moving the outlaw she had dragged in off the mountain trail had not been easy, she’d pulled him into the cottage on a sled her husband had used to drag rocks and logs across their plot of land when he had been present enough to tend to it. The rope had dug into her hands deep enough to leave burns. There were still splinters in her thumbs. Seth was not yet back so she had not needed to explain the state of her hands, perhaps she would never have to. If he asked, she didn’t feel as though she would be inclined to answer; what business was it of his what she got up to since he had abandoned her up here in the frigid North? Constance was glad he was gone, she hoped he stayed away a good while longer, she had settled into her monotony with nature and would be glad to live out the rest of her days in this way.

Perhaps not glad, that was rather a strong word. Content? Even that was a little laden with emotion.

Not miserable. That was it.

Constance sewed quietly for a time and when she was done with the cuffs on one shirt and the buttons on another she stood and stretched, she took a drink of water, lit an afternoon cigarette, and gazed out of one of the windows silently.

Not a thought crossed her mind. Not a cloud nor a shadow. Not until she saw a figure on the path.

Snuffing out her cigarette in the brass dish on the sill, she leaned closer to the glass to look out. The panes were mottled, not the best quality, but she could make out a horse and a person in the saddle by their distorted shapes.

Seth? No. Please, God no.

She took her shawl from the armchair by the fire and went to the door where she opened it wide and stepped out onto the porch, still wearing woollen socks without her boots. It wasn’t her husband. Panic subsided, she felt a little weak at how quickly it drained away, the rush of her heartbeat pounding in her throat calming when the man and the horse came into view proper.

Arthur Morgan.

That panic, however, was replaced by confusion. Constance had imagined she would never see the man again after they had shaken hands and she had watched him ride off. That had been nearly a fortnight past and she had settled back into her routine thinking, what an interesting story she would never tell to anyone, what a strange night and morning it had been that she possessed now only in her memory. Here he was, riding as calmly as anything under the posts and past the little sign that crudely proclaimed CEDAR FELL at the apex of the path. What he was doing here, she had no idea, but her fingers tightened where she was holding the door. He was no law man, they had established that, she wondered if he had come back to rob her and that her impression of him had been formed ill in the short time she had known him. If she was going to die, she thought, at least it might be in her own home. At least it might be here where she was free.

He did not ride his horse all the way to the cottage, nor to the small stable where her own horse was swatting his tail back and forth. The man swung down from the saddle, smooth and sure, in the middle of the mud, took a few paces towards her and paused. Perhaps he sensed her confusion, or read her wide eyes as fear.

“Mrs. Everly,” he said, tipping his hat.

“Mr. Morgan,” she answered. “Have you come back to relieve me of my life or worldly goods?”

He took his hat off proper and held it between his hands, a crooked smile on his features; “No ma’am.”

“Well, you don’t appear to be bleeding, you’re not bringing me more bullet holes to darn.”

“No ma’am, I ain’t. I’ve come to call on you and thank you.”

“You’ve already thanked me, sir. Sufficiently.”

Morgan moved a pace or two. Constance stood firm. She thought she could see that his holsters were empty, but his coat covered them and she wasn’t completely convinced and was wary of a ruse.

“See, I don’t think I have. Would’ve been dead that night if you hadn’t brought me back here, and riding out I saw how far it was you brought me up the trail. Ain’t gonna have no peace ‘til I settle things, that’s all.”

Constance pressed her lips together, watching him, unblinking. If there was a way to read him, she didn’t know it, she had no idea who he was and what he might be playing at, whether the sincerity she thought she could detect was an affect meant to thaw her defences or just that, sincerity. A thug she could spot, a thug was easy to see. They were big, brutish, threw their weight around literally rather than figuratively, but a huckster? Much harder to spot, they could lie and slime their way through just about anything that life threw at them, they could make up a story quick and natural and on the spot, and that was it, they had all they needed; trust. Once a charlatan had the trust of their mark they had everything they required to undo that person and they never had to fire a bullet or throw a punch. Constance, in watching Morgan, was trying to determine if he was one or the other or, worst of all, both. He smiled much too kindly to be a thug alone.

“Let me pay you,” he insisted, then gestured with his hat; “For your wasted thread.”

At that, she chuffed a small laugh; hardly more than a breath, but a laugh nonetheless. He reached his hand into the satchel on his hip and produced a small wad of money which he held up for her to see.

“That’s not necessary,” she said, “I told you, it was a charitable deed and charity loses its shine when it’s paid for, don’t you think?”

He was looking off to the side, blue eyes narrowing a little, “S’pose it does when you put it that way.”

“Really, Mr. Morgan. Keep your money. Please. I neither need nor want it.”

After a moment of still thought he put the money back in his satchel with a nod but when he looked at her again, he was still squinting a little. He held up a hand and turned away, returning to his horse where he flipped up the cover of the saddlebag and began rooting around inside it in a way that made her nerves prickle. The cold, calm part of her mind told her that if he had meant to shoot her then he would have done it by now and it was unlikely he was going for a gun after having offered her money. The hot, impulsive, survival driven side of her sent a rush through her body that told her if she needed to run, she had the power to do so. However, it wasn’t a gun he produced but a book. He turned back towards her and walked with it held up in the air. It had a green cover but her eyesight was too poor to see the title. He seemed to realise and turned it around so he could read it to her.

“Field Guide to the Botanical Kingdom,” he announced, “I don’t need it no more, seems maybe you might find somethin’ in it worth knowing way out here. Would y’take this at least?”

Constance hesitated and then sighed and released the door, she crossed the porch and stood at the top of the steps. Morgan was still holding the book and it seemed for a moment that he was expecting her to come and take it, that he hadn’t actually looked at her properly, because a moment later he took in the fact that she was only wearing socks and brought the book to the bottom of the steps himself, holding it out to her properly. Constance took it from him, turning it around so she could take in the cover. She opened it and leafed through a few pages; it did look interesting, there were diagrams and the Latin names for plants, advice on what was edible and what was decidedly not. As she turned a page one of the drawings caught her eyes and her brows rose, a smile coming to her features.

“I recognise this one,” she said, half to herself. “There’s a stand of it near the waterfall. I’ve long wondered what it was, such pretty leaves.”

Poisonous, though. Good thing she had never decided to pick it.

When she looked up the outlaw had his thumbs hooked through his gun belt and was watching her with a lean smile of his own. He nodded his head, drawing to a conclusion their transaction now that the book was in her hands. Constance closed the pages and wrapped her arms around it more to fend off the chill than anything else; the gesture had moved her somewhat and she looked down at him standing at the bottom of the steps with a little more softness in her manner.

“You rode all the way up here just to give me money.”

“I did, ma’am. I’ll be on my way now, I’m grateful and I wish you good health.”

Impulsively she stepped down onto the top step, interrupting him as he began to turn away.

“Have you had the stitches out?”

“Not yet, soon as I get back. Seems rot never set in, though. Feels fine.”

As though to demonstrate he rolled his shoulder a little and the motion looked practised enough that she took it to mean he had been doing that for the last few weeks, testing out the joint and the muscle, seeing that no lasting damage had been done.

“Nonsense,” she said. “I’ll take them out.”

“Mrs. Everly, no. I just got done paying you back for one favour.”

“I don’t like to leave a job half done. You’re here, think of it as a parting gift, no payment required.”

When he still seemed reluctant, she stepped to the side and gestured to the door which was still hanging on its hinges, open a little ways. She cradled the book into her side and went over to the door, pushing it wider but watching him the whole way. It was like trying to cajole a stray dog, she wondered if she should leave a trail of breadcrumbs for him to follow. As she approached the threshold, though, he started to follow her, muttering under his breath words that she couldn’t catch. Constance led him to the table where she still had a couple of shirts laid out and pieces pinned together. She put the book down on the corner and folded up the material into a neat little bundle and then pulled out the chair at the head enough that he would have room to sit and she would have room to get around him. Morgan was following her. He had left the door open behind him which let in a slight draft but she didn’t close it. Either he had left it open for her, so that she didn’t feel closed in with a man she hardly knew, or he had left it open for himself so that he could make a swift exeunt at any moment. He was still holding his hat, turning it around in his hands but notably not placing it on the table; apparently, he knew what manners were if nothing else. That surprised her.

“Here,” she said, holding out open palms for it. When he gave it to her, Constance hooked his hat on a peg by the door, next to her own straw hat she wore on sunny days.

At the table he was taking his jacket off and sitting down. He folded it arm to arm and dropped it over his knee, keeping himself and all his personal effects confined to that one chair where he sat.

“Didn’t say before but this is a nice home, Mrs. Everly.”

“Thank you. It does just fine.”

He nodded, unbuttoning his shirt.

“Quiet,” he remarked further.

“May I?”

Constance gestured to his shoulder, he was shrugging his shirt off but she didn’t require it gone completely, she could reach the stitches just as well if he had it off on one side. Mr. Morgan nodded and stopped what he was doing, hands hovering just out of the way as she untucked the fabric. She had wedged herself into the gap and brought her sharpest scissors for fabric to the end of the table where he sat. Her fingertips grazed the slope where his neck met his shoulder as she drew back the collar; his skin was warm, freckled lightly by the sun. Her hands were cold, they were always cold.

“Apologies,” she said of her touch.

He shook his head, waved a hand.

It seemed that he had been right about the stitches after all; they had healed nicely, the skin wasn’t red or raised, it was not hot to the touch nor weeping, no gangrene, there was a shiny newness to the edges where it had knitted together to close up those nasty bullet holes. The bruising looked to be healing nicely, too. Green and yellow but fading. She touched the edges of the wounds gently. He didn’t make a sound but he did turn his head to look at her and her eyes rose briefly to meet his. They both looked away.

Constance picked up the scissors.

Morgan took the opportunity to speak as she leaned over his side to catch the edges of the thread in her fingertips and snip them free; “You out here all alone?”

“My husband is away on business. In town.”

“Which town?”

“Rhodes. Then Saint Denis.”

“That ain’t close. Gonna be out here alone an awful long time, ma’am.”

“Perhaps I enjoy solitude. When I can find it.”

He cleared his throat and a twinge went through her stomach.

“I mean to say, I’ve enough to occupy myself.”

“Sewing and such?”

“And such.”

“Pickin’ up wayward travellers bleeding in the roads?”

“That, I try not to make into a habit.”

“Good,” he laughed a little. “You shouldn’t if you value your life all that much.”

Quiet again, she snipped the rest of the stitches, pulling them free one by one and dropping them onto the table for disposal. He was right, of course, she should never have done what she did if she valued her life. That was the crux, was it not? Did she value her life all that much? Not really. Each day blended into the next, she lived the day the same way her lungs breathed air or her eyes blinked, the same way her heart beat from one moment to the next. It happened and she existed with it, waking, working, sleeping, and then again. Colours were muted, sensations dulled. It was fine, it was reassuring monotony, everything stayed the same and she allowed it to wash over her, a wave on a distant shore. If she refrained from feeling anything then she did not have to think about everything, little hurts never pricked the surface because she had pushed them so deep under the waves, they drowned within her. When she had told this man that she had brought him back here and tended his wounds because it was the Christian thing to do, it was a lie and she knew it. Whether he knew it too, she could only guess, and did not want to learn.

“There,” she said. “Consider thyself healed.”

Constance patted his shoulder once and then sidled out of the space between the table and chair. He shrugged his shirt back on, standing with his jacket on his arm as he tucked the fabric back into his pants. She had turned around so she wasn’t watching him, picking up the book again to occupy her hands.

“Feels better already,” he said.

“I’m afraid the scar will hardly be subtle.”

“Ah, I ain’t worried about that so much. Got plenty of scars already, couple more ain’t gonna do no harm.”

As he went towards the door, he tossed his jacket over his shoulders and shook his arms through the sleeves. Constance followed him, picking his hat off the peg for him lest he forget it, and she passed it to him when they were outside. She stood at arm’s length from him, book in the crook of her elbow. He put his hat on his head, giving it a light tug to pull it into the right place and then he gave one of those small acknowledging nods of his.

“I did mean what I said, Mrs. Everly. You shouldn’t make a habit out of bringing back strays. Those other men, that night. If you’d brought one of them back ‘stead of me it would’ve been a much different story with a much worse ending, I’m sure.”

He was right but she lied anyway, “If doing the right thing was easy or safe, none of us would be afraid of Hell, Mr. Morgan. We’d all be straight into Heaven.” 

It seemed like he might counter her but after he had opened his mouth, he closed it again and nodded before he went off down the steps and back into the mud. The sky had clouded over and a light mist was beginning to fall on the mountainside. When he whistled his horse came to him and he reached out to take the reins, leading her around so that when he hoisted himself into the saddle, he was facing Constance. She stood on the porch in her socks with her book held in both hands and watched him as she had done before.

“Travel safely,” she said, this time her tone warm.

“I surely will, ma’am.”

That was that. Arthur Morgan rode out of Cedar Fell again and she watched him go, again. Constance stood on the porch as the sky slowly dimmed. Something felt different about the evening as it drew in but she could not pin a name to it; it was a sense, intangible, amorphous. She looked down at the book he had given her, turning it over a few times. It was too dark to read it and she put it down on the edge of the railing that circled the porch, out of the rain. She walked down the steps and stood in the mud. The water soaked through the wool around her feet and sent chills up her legs. That was real, she felt it. Constance closed her eyes and breathed in the thick air, rain falling on her head. It might dissolve her completely if she stayed there long enough and she was willing to wait. If the Heavens wanted to take her, she would allow it, she practically begged a silent sky to smother her in the rain that it poured on the landscape.

Darkness came seeping through the trees and, still solid in state, she went inside to change and climb into bed, where she could read her new book by candlelight and in peace.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _God blessed me, I'm a free man,  
>  With no place free to go  
> Paralyzed and collared-tight,  
> No pills for what I fear_  
>  \- I Wish I was the Moon, Neko Case

> _Went back to see that lady in the mountains again, Mrs. Everly. Got some foolish idea in my mind to pay her for the trouble she went to stitching my side back together, but she wouldn’t take it. Gave her a book instead that’s got plants and flowers in it. More use for her than for me. Not sure I got any more the measure of her on our second meeting than I did the first, seems cold and distant but has a kind touch._
> 
> _Folks spend too much time out in the wilderness for their own good sometimes, them that’s not suited to it anyway. Maybe she’s one of them._

Arthur had drawn a crude sketch next to his writing of Mrs Everly standing on her porch in her socks, cradling the book he had given her in her arms like a new-born. Couldn’t quite recall her face clearly enough to make a real drawing out of it but he captured the mood; darkening skies, the rain beginning to fizz in the air. He stared down at it a while and then added the tiniest smile to her sketched features, remembering her slight laugh when he’d said he would pay for her wasted thread.

> _Took the stitches out for me and told me to travel safe again, which I did. Hope she gets on all right. Reckon something might be up with that husband being gone so long but it ain’t my business and she don’t seem to want any help. Back at camp now, we need money to get out of this place fast as possible and so I am back to looking for leads where I can while keeping my head down._
> 
> _Guess we’ll see how long that lasts._

Horseshoe Overlook. It was an all right place for them to hide for the time being but Arthur didn’t feel all that secure with only the trees to shroud their activity from the nearby town. If it could even be called a down. More like a mud track lined with wooden shacks. Still, it had a bank and that was a sign of civilisation if nothing else recommended the place, and the girls seemed to be enjoying seeing new faces. He had gone into town, before his brush with the O’Driscolls up in the north, with Uncle, Tilly, Karen and Mary-Beth to see what they could dig up and since then they’d been keeping a low profile. Save beating the man as had hurt Karen senseless. Small towns were good for hiding just as much as they was bad; not enough faces to lose themselves in, just enough people to run a few scams here and there. They’d just have to see how it turned out and hope to whatever God or Devil was keeping a watch on them they didn’t make waves big enough to give themselves away

> _Met some old drunk in Valentine. Claimed he was a shootist. Seemed more like a clown._
> 
> _Some poor fool was writing a book about him, or trying to. Levin was the name of the writer. Jim Calloway was the killer. Apparently Levin needs more information. Asked me to find a few folk who have spent more time in publicity than me and knew old Jim back when he was a real killer. Their names are Emmett Granger, Flaco Hernandez, Billy Midnight, and Black Belle._
> 
> _Sound like a troupe of clowns. We shall see what kinds of people those who want to be famous murderers is. My hopes are not too high._

Next to where he had written about Levin in the saloon, Arthur had idly sketched Boadicea tied to her post and a cat he had seen in Valentine that same day. He took the likeness of some raspberries when he had set up camp next to a whole gulch full of the bushes; he had filled a satchel full of them and brought them back to camp. The girls ate them rather than giving them to Pearson, God knew the old pig would only ruin them by turning them into some awful kind of paste. Jack had smudges of raspberry around his face all morning until Abigail caught up to him and wiped it away, pretending to be furious that he was so unclean but laughing when he opened his palm to show her that he had saved her one.

Days such as that weren’t so terrible in the camp, Arthur liked seeing smiles on the faces of those he cared for and he liked hearing their laughter. They had been in possession of little of either in the weeks leading up to their current predicament. All that running in the mountains, all them deaths. It made his heart sink when he thought about Jenny and Davey. Bad times.

When his thoughts turned to the mountains, he thought on Mrs. Everly again for the first time in a long while. Arthur flipped back to the entry he had made after their first meeting, reading his own words and wondering whether she was still up there in the little cabin, sewing shirts by a fire, waiting for her husband to come back to her. Seemed such a lonely place,

> _Got myself shot. O’Driscolls discovered me as I was scouting north for Hosea. He’s worried about how close we remain to Blackwater. Though I doubt we’ll be found by Pinkertons where we are, I see his reasoning. Best to have someplace to run to if we do need to run._
> 
> _Damn O’Driscolls must have had the same idea._
> 
> _I was dead. I should’ve been dead, but an English lady patched me up and sent me on my way again. Mrs. Everly, was her name. Sewed up my shoulder. Put Boadicea into her own stable, too. Think she imagined I might kill her. I woke up and she put my own gun in my face. Then she fed me, helped me with my shirt and off I went._
> 
> _Peculiar woman. Had eyes like steel. Tired eyes. Still could’ve cut me sure as any knife I reckon. It unsettles me to think on her. Feel that whole business ain’t done yet and won’t be until I repay her kindness. Or folly, whichever it was as made her do what she did._

Tired eyes, he had written. Arthur had seen reflected in them his own weariness. It had been such a long, hard time on the run and he knew the camp was on the edge of exhaustion. They had to find someplace to put their roots down proper, not mountains maybe, but out West where they belonged. It was too civilised even here in Valentine. The horizon was vast, the sky wide and open, and yet he still felt hemmed in. On the pretence of running jobs he took himself off into the country in search of some peace and quiet but he always came back with something for the gang. Whether it was money, jewellery, or a carcass for the pot, he made certain that he provided for them that he called family.

Arthur closed his journal and looked up from where he was sitting on the edge of his cot. There was work to be done, work to be found. Couldn’t spend all day ruminating on things he couldn’t change with immediate effect. He picked his hat up off the crate next to him and got to his feet.

Not three paces out of his tent Herr Strauss called his name. To work, he went.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AN: Please be aware that from this point on there are references to depression, dissociation, and other mental health issues. Be gentle with yourself and if these things are triggering or damaging to you please avoid this story. If you struggle with these things know that you are valuable and you are loved and you are not alone <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _I don’t need another friend  
>  When most of them  
> I can barely keep up with them_  
>  \- Civilian, Wye Oak

Annesburg was filthy as towns went. There was a black film on almost everything from the mines and Constance often found that even when she had ridden all the way home again there were smudges on her cheeks or neck. There was something stale about the town, maybe it was the scent of oil on the water or the perpetual fog that hung over the place, but it stagnated, stewing in its own filth and despair. Dirty as it was, it did not smell half as bad as Saint Denis. She could stomach the stench of hard work and poverty better than she could the sour smack of the social elite and power mad. If Annesburg was a brothel at least it declared as such. Saint Denis pretended to be something it was not. Respectable. In any case, what she thought of the town hardly mattered, it was the closest one to her home and the only place she could buy supplies unless she wanted to venture further south to the Van Horn Trading Post. She had heard enough about that place to know she was better avoiding it.

Thus, it was on an unseasonably crisp and bright morning that she rode down the sloped track into Annesburg. On either side of her were full saddlebags, shirts she had sewn and two waistcoats, vests, whatever the American parlance was. Once it had become abundantly clear that Seth meant to leave her at Cedar Fell she had taken it upon herself to find a way to survive; she was no naturalist, she didn’t know how to hunt and kill game, she barely knew how to shoot though her grandmother had thought it a grand old time to have her take lessons with a rifle, she had no idea which plants would make her delirious and sick or outright kill her so she could hardly forage around the forest in the mountains for food. The book had changed that somewhat. Constance had read the book Arthur Morgan had given to her cover to cover twice over and had used it to identify a few plants near the cottage. She had found some mushrooms she could eat and some leaves to make tea and that had all been very fine and edifying. Even when she had no appetite, she had tried the mushrooms and when her stomach groaned, she could not help but cook and eat an entire bowl of them and washed it down with raspberry tea. There were things she needed that she could not find in the wilderness with the help of a book, of course. Thankfully she had taken to making shirts to sell in Annesburg a long while past, using the money to buy more fabric and the little things she needed; coffee and soap, cigarettes and bourbon when the mood took her. Such were the things she subsisted on.

In truth, Constance could never really decipher her own motivations all that well; she would have starved on the mountainside and hardly noticed it, she didn’t know why she continued the folly of existence when she was so far removed from everything she had known and loved. Whether it was picking mushrooms with the help of her little field guide or purchasing supplies in town, it didn’t seem to matter all that much. The more she poured into herself the more spilled out of her whether it was reason or anger, forgiveness or hate, none of it stayed. It all drained away. Making shirts occupied her hands but there was no need for it to occupy her thoughts, those were already filled with the futility of things. So, why then? Riding into town, she reached out to touch her horse’s neck, the familiar coarseness of King’s mane between her fingers brought her mind back to her body, stopped it floating off into the aether. Why, was too big a question. Thinking on it made her stomach turn, her heart flutter. Why brought the image of her father to her mind and that made her eyes burn scalding hot. 

One foot in front of the other. One day at a time.

Constance tethered King to a post in front of Schneider’s General Store and swung herself down from the saddle, a practised motion what with all the material of her skirts and petticoat. She gave the stallion a pat and an oatcake and he snorted at her happily. Next, she unpacked the saddlebags, stacking the shirts and vests into her arms. As she approached the door it opened from within and an unmistakable figure came out. Tall, sun scorched and wearing his familiar hat, Arthur Morgan had on a dun brown jacket over a white shirt with the collar undone and a kerchief tied there loosely, his vest was missing a button and had a worn patch where the warp had abandoned the weft. He hadn’t shaved in a few days by the looks of him and his hair was long enough that it curled under his collar, stuck to his neck in places. He was taller than her by several inches and looked down at her with eyes that rivalled the sky in hue. He stopped in his tracks, still holding the door.

“Mrs. Everly,” he said, his tone surprised. “Good morning, ma’am.”

“Mr. Morgan. I didn’t expect to see you.” Again, that was. “What brings you to Annesburg?”

“Business, same as you it seems.” Constance looked down at the shirts bundled in her arms as he nodded to them, neatly folded and pressed and wrapped in waxed paper, ready to be sold.

He held the door open for her and Constance passed him with a thank you, trying not to brush him as she went. It was dim inside the store and she had to squint whilst her eyes adjusted to the change in light; there were tins and cans and boxes of things in the windows, blocking the light from getting in. She approached the counter, acutely aware that Arthur Morgan was following her a few paces behind. Mr. Schneider was nowhere to be seen, likely in the back of the shop, so she put the bundles down on the counter and ran her hand over the top of them to smooth them out. Arthur came slowly to the counter, languid strides carrying him across the dusty floorboards to a spot just far enough away from her that it would not appear indecent.

“Good morning,” she said, realising she had not returned the courtesy. “Forgive me, you took me by surprise.”

A door closed behind the counter and the shop owner came with a crate of tins in his arms for restocking. When he saw that it was Constance at the counter, he set them down immediately, crossing over to her so that he could greet her.

“Ah, Mrs. Everly. Constance, liebchen.” Mr. Schneider had a heavy German accent, he was small and ruddy with a bulbous nose and a moustache that hid the entire bottom half of his face but when he smiled it was all in his eyes so it was no matter that his mouth was hidden. “How have you been? Well, ja? You’ve more colour today, much better. And some beautiful shirts for me to sell? Excellent, excellent.”

Constance smiled at him; she could hardly help herself when she saw Mr Schneider. On perhaps her third trip into the town to sell him her shirts he had asked after her first name and once she had given it, he had always called her liebchen this and liebchen that. He was so kind it made her heart ache. Once she had even had supper with him and his wife. A lovely couple, warm and funny and friendly beyond measure. Better people than she felt she deserved to call friends. They had not seemed to know what to make of her at first, she never came to town with her husband after all, but she did wear a wedding ring. Perhaps they thought she was a widow; they were far too polite to ask and Constance rarely liked to volunteer information about herself if she could help it. In any case she liked that they were her acquaintances, that they were far removed from her life before New Hanover or even Saint Denis or London. If it bothered them that she had told them so little of herself, they did not show it and for that she was eternally grateful.

Mr. Schneider proceeded to unwrap the top shirt to have a look at it. His hands were the cleanest in town, surely, for he never left a mark on the material which could not be said for the garments once they were matched with their purchasers. He smoothed it out on the counter and complimented the buttons and the turn of the collar, he said how much he liked the darting she had put in, loose but still lending at least some shape to the fabric. Constance smiled passively, letting him talk away.

“Of course, I will take them all. Lovely as usual. You’ll be wanting to renew your order for starch and buttons, ja?”

“Please,” she acknowledged.

Arthur was looking around the store, removing himself from their exchange, and Constance stole a few glances in his direction as she and Mr. Schneider talked. It was polite of him, she supposed, to wait for her to conclude her business. It was certainly the gentlemanly thing to do and she had observed in both of their prior encounters that he seemed to have a sense of etiquette. It wasn’t really like the London etiquette she had grown up accustomed to, nor even that of the cities here in America. There was a warmth to it, an amiability that she was confounded and fascinated by.

Hans Schneider had pulled out the fabric samples for her to look at. Some of the money she had just earned would go directly back into paying for more fabric so that she could begin the whole monotony again.

“I’ll take five yards of the white,” she pointed her finger to the samples, running it across a few of the colour swatches he had. Her eyes flicked up and looked at Arthur; “What do you think, Mr. Morgan? Blue or this green?”

“Ah, don’t know much about making shirts.”

“You do know something about wearing them, though.”

He conceded, coming back to the counter. “Well. You got me there. The blue is nice, I guess.”

Constance looked at Mr. Schneider, “Six yards of the blue.”

“Very good, liebchen. I’ll place the order right away.”

“Thank you, Hans.”

He put his hand on hers where it rested on the ledger, the lines around his eyes deepening as they crinkled up. Constance smiled and he gave her hand a pat before he withdrew, taking the ledger with him and looking at Arthur as he picked up the shirts and disappeared into the back of the store again. The money that Hans had given her Constance put into a small pouch that she drew out from the pocket in her skirt, attached to her belt with a cord. She tucked it away as she started to move towards the door again. Arthur was moving with her, getting to the door first so that he could open it.

Outside it was still bright, the smell of the water and foetid mud of the shore burned the back of her throat. They fell wordlessly into step with one another. The post station was just across the street; Constance had a package to pick up and began walking in that direction and Arthur filled the space on her right, slowing his gait somewhat so that she could keep pace without rushing. There were carts and wagons in the way and so they made their way along the front of the stores and houses in an effort to find a place to cross. It dawned on her that she wasn’t only surprised to see him but pleased to see him, too. She had not asked him to accompany her and he had not sought permission and yet it felt right, normal even. At least she would be able to carry a conversation with him for a few minutes more before they parted ways again and she, ever the stoic, began speaking unprompted.

“Thank you for the book, Mr. Morgan,” she said after a few paces. “It’s been illuminating, to say the least.”

“Glad someone got use out of it.”

Was she bored? Lonely? Had the solitude of Cedar Fell gotten under her skin without her noticing? When she was up there, she did not want for company, the quiet of the forest was what sustained rather than being something that she was searching to escape by coming to town or striking up an idle chat with the man at her side. Up at Cedar Fell it was like she had fallen through a gap in the world and was hidden from it by the trees and the mountain teeth, cocooned in the mists. After such a stifling youth she had found something comforting in the freeness of her solitude. So, what was she doing?

“What’s liebchen mean?” Arthur asked her, piercing her thoughts.

“Hm?”

“Schneider called you that ‘bout a dozen times.”

“Sweetheart, I think. I don’t speak much German.”

“I know a German feller, but he don’t call anyone sweetheart.”

“It’s just his way. I think they must have lost a son or a daughter, perhaps both. They’ve pictures out in their home but they never speak about them.” He made a thoughtful sound deep in his throat and she continued; “It appears that now they adopt wayward sinners here and there.”

“That what you are? A wayward sinner?”

“Aren’t we all?”

That made him crack a small smile but she felt the sharpness of it, the way he prickled slightly. He looked ahead again. They crossed the street between the passing horses and wagons. The mine was busy this morning, it seemed. Constance could see men in suits down by the train tracks. Perhaps there was more business going on with the mines than the simple business of hauling coal, likely someone on the owner’s behalf had come down for an inspection, perhaps to examine the paperwork. As quickly as her musings on the men came, they went as they entered the station. Inside, the clerk passed the packet, small and crumpled, under the brass bars, through the slot. Constance picked it up and returned to Arthur who was reading the postings on the board, his arms folded across his chest. He looked deep in thought, himself, but turned to meet her.

“New fabric scissors,” she said, holding the brown package and then tucking it under her arm, though he didn’t ask she felt as though she needed to say something, explain something, lie to fill the silence. “Mr. Everly was meant to bring me a pair, but I fear I’ll be waiting some time yet.”

“Your husband still ain’t home?”

“He’s been delayed in Saint Denis.”

“Ah,” he said, opening the double doors for the both of them. Constance saw him work his jaw to the side like he was chewing his cheek. His hands were on his hips, she could nearly hear thoughts churning away behind his eyes as he looked down at her and added; “Would you let me escort you home, Mrs. Everly? It ain’t outta my way before you say no.”

She hesitated. Dust blew up in a great flurry as a cart rode past and she held up her hand again to shield her eyes from the grit instead of the sun. Here, at last, was a crossroads. Here was a moment where she was certain what she should do was decline; it was the morning, the day was bright, she would be completely fine riding back home on her own as she had done on many occasions before, she did not need an escort, certainly not one armed to the teeth. No, thank you, that was what she should say. Bid him farewell, thank him for his company and conversation. The End. _Fin_.

“Constance.”

That was what she actually said. Instead of brushing him off and drawing their acquaintance to a close she offered her given name and with it, further familiarity. Her name which she had given only to Mr. Schneider after he had invited her, a solitary woman with an absent husband, to take supper with him and his wife. It was offered to Arthur Morgan without prompting.

Heat clambered up her neck. 

“Constance,” he leant on her name and she swallowed against a sudden dryness in her throat. “Would give me some peace of mind if I could be sure you get back to Cedar Fell in one piece.”

“Well. For the sake of your peace of mind.”

There was her choice. When presented with the option to continue on as she had for months or see what might happen if she took the opportunity for connection, for friendship, she reached out and seized what was in front of her, like a drowning woman clawing at a raft she clutched onto him, someone to talk to, someone who was different, someone alive. Whether loneliness or boredom or the endless progression of time which dragged her step by step to a grave she longed for, something deep in the pit of her recognised his offer as a lifeline even if he did not mean it as such.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Oh, I am bold  
>  As brass posing as gold  
> You can shine me all you want  
> But I am hard as I am cold_  
>  \- Drown, Marika Hackman

Arthur picked up an oval picture frame from the mantle above the dark fireplace, speaking over his shoulder by turning his head just a little; “Handsome couple you two make.”

It was a wedding picture. Constance Everly stood with her hand on the forearm of a stoic looking man, taller than her with short hair, clean shaven, maybe Irish or something, square jaw, brooding brow. It wasn’t the husband he was looking at, though. It was her. Smiling in her white wedding dress, dimples in her round cheeks. Face must have ached something awful, holding that expression the whole time. That or she had been genuinely happy and could not suppress her smile enough for the appropriate expression. What a notion. Looked like a completely different woman, really. There was a brightness in her eyes in the picture, even with its dull brown tones, that he had not seen in person. Auburn hair fell over one of her shoulders in dark curls, she had a crown of flowers and what looked like pearls or some such on her head, a veil, and probably the biggest bunch of daisies and what-have-yous in her hand that he had ever seen. Long sleeves with lace cuffs, a high, demure neck line. Looked royal, almost. Pretty. He turned the frame over in his gloved hands and read the inscription on the back. _Seth & Nancy, 1892. _

Seven years married and Constance looked at least ten years older than the girl in the picture, that weren’t a good sign.

“Nancy?” He asked her.

“My friends call me Nancy,” she said. “Constance is a bit formal.”

He put the picture frame back and turned around on the spot. Once they had come up from Annesburg she had insisted that he come in at least for something to drink before he went on his way, telling him it was completely inhospitable for him to escort her home and her not to do at least that. So, he agreed. Couldn’t help himself, really. Seemed an interesting sort of woman and his curiosity, which had gotten him into more trouble than he liked to admit over the years, would not allow him to pass up the opportunity for further conversation. Besides, it was going to be a long ride out after Cedar Fell, might as well take what he could get in the way of civilised conversation.

From the table in the kitchen his host was watching him as she poured hot water into a teapot. He felt her dark eyes on him even when not meeting them. He took his gloves off and left the hearth, where he had previously lain bleeding, weeks ago, and joined her in the kitchen. It was the same room, really, the cabin was small, just a few rooms, but it was warm and with the opportunity for closer inspection he could see her personality in places he had not registered before; there was a folded lot of fabric on a stool by the back window, curtains he thought she must have made herself hung hooked behind bent nails that he imagined Mr. Everly must have hammered home, over the back of the sofa was the blanket she had put around his shoulders that morning, now that he looked at it he could see it was a quilt with patches of different fabric scraps sewn together. All around there were things he had the feeling she had made, but there was dust on the table by the door, dead flowers still in the vase on the mantle, cigarettes on a windowsill that faced the front with a brass dish for the ashes. Arthur knew plenty of women that smoked, just no fancy English ones.

“Do have a seat, Mr. Morgan.”

Constance was gesturing at the chairs around the table and he obliged; “Arthur’s fine, ma’am.”

“Arthur.”

That was all she said, a clean and crisp pronunciation of his name. She poured tea into two china cups and placed one in front of him before she took her seat. Just like that morning he sat at the end and she sat around the corner to him, perched on the edge of the chair, back straight and shoulders square.

“Seems you got a good thing going in Annesburg,” he remarked.

“Mr. Schneider has been very kind. I’m certain he could buy shirts from anywhere, and does, but he always takes what I bring him.”

“Ah, well. They looked fine shirts. Can’t say I blame him.”

Arthur went to pick up his teacup and had to straighten in his chair over sudden fear that he would break it; the thing was so damn tiny and his hands were large by comparison. Wasn’t often that he felt clumsy or out of place, that was why he liked living out in the wilderness or even in camp, nothing was all that breakable out in the wild, but civilised society seemed to like its fancy and fragile things; tea cups, crystal glasses, dainty trinkets his big dumb hands was too stupid to handle. Made him nervous. Arthur didn’t often feel nervous.

“Do you smoke, Mr. Morgan?”

“Arthur.”

“Arthur, yes. Do you?”

“Sure,” he said. “Much as anyone.”

Constance rose from the table, retrieving the packet of cigarettes from the windowsill he had observed moments ago and bringing them back with the ashtray. She set it down and offered him one of the cigarettes. Arthur slid one out of the packet but immediately offered it back to her. Ladies first, and all. She took it with slender fingers, pinpricked and pale. He took the matches off the table and struck one for her, which she leaned into. He lit his own himself.

“It’s not considered ladylike in England,” she told him, blowing a soft puff of smoke out to the side. “But Americans don’t seem as bothered. I’m not one for idle hands, you see. It’s the root of mischief. So I’m told.”

Arthur laughed around his own smoke, “Sounds ‘bout right.”

“I imagine you must know a fair amount about mischief.”

“Sure do.”

“It can’t be all that bad if you’re still at it at your age.”

“At my age, huh?”

Arthur was convinced he caught the shadow of a smile; he would swear it on a bible. Constance raised her dark brows and said, “Not that you’re old. Just old for mischief making.”

“Getting’ shot ain’t exactly what I call mischief.” 

“No, me neither.”

They smoked for a moment in pleasant silence. Constance tapped the ash from her light into the dish she had placed between them. When she wasn’t looking at him or speaking, she stared off into nothingness. Arthur wondered what thoughts were rattling around in her mind but didn’t ask, didn’t feel like he knew her well enough for that. They were having a civil conversation and he didn’t want to spoil it by opening his mouth to say something mean or rough. There were times for being mean and rough and he’d gotten pretty good at knowing when they was, but here wasn’t the place for either. Truth was they made him tired, sometimes. There weren’t a thing he would not do for the gang, he had done plenty and was sure there was more on the horizon, but it wasn’t all he was.

God, Arthur wanted to believe that wasn’t all he was.

“Must be hard bein’ out here alone,” he said after a pause.

Constance was looking at the floor, staring at a knot in the wood, but she brought her eyes up and flicked her cigarette again when he spoke; “Not really.”

“I don’t mean any offence by it, just mean, lookin’ out for yourself can be tough in the mountains.”

“It’s home.”

That was that. The brittle quality to her voice made him shift in his seat. Had he hit a nerve? They drank their tea and remarked on the weather in the mountains, Constance said she knitted on occasion, too, and paid no mind to the cold mornings and nights. There was wood enough to keep the place warm, what with the trees surrounding the property, the track up to Cedar Fell was hardly a main throughfare, most people heading to Annesburg were coming up from further south, like Blackwater. Arthur finished his tea when that place came up.

Constance cleaned up the cups and Arthur stood.

Further evidence that she was from a tier of society that he did not belong to, she came to see him out; that was the polite thing to do, she had not done a single impolite thing, to his thinking, since they had met. Yet the sting of her indifference was palpable. Maybe that was why she entered his thoughts every so often when he was away from Cedar Fell, the strangeness of her demeanour and manners. As she came towards him, smoothing out her skirts and taking what appeared to him to be a steadying breath, he noticed something which must have been hidden by wisps of her hair.

“You, uh, you got a little,” Arthur motioned to his neck where he could see a swipe of black coal dust mirrored on her skin.

Constance made a small sound and reached her hand up to rub it away but she missed, he tried to tell her a bit more accurately where the dirt was by pointing at himself again. But, again, she missed it; “That coal dust gets everywhere,” she complained.

“Mind if I just,” Arthur pulled his kerchief off his neck and took a step to her.

Plenty of people froze when he was approaching them with intent. Usually that intent was to do them some harm or another, either with the pound of his knuckles or the sing of bullets, and people cowered from him. Arthur was tall, he knew, he was broad, he knew that too. Lot of men and women alike shrank down when his intent was aimed at them on account of his size. Weren’t that what Dutch needed him for? Throwing his weight around? Weren’t that how he contributed to the gang? It was certainly what Herr Strauss needed him for. As the German put it, folk were happy to borrow money from someone small and mousey like him, but they were much more motivated to give it back to someone like Arthur when he came collecting. Constance, though, did not so much shrink when he raised his hand with his neck tie, but stopped completely still and stared up at him. Arthur felt bad for a heartbeat, worried in a flash of hot thought that he had scared her with the motion on account of how sudden it had been and how it wasn’t all that proper considering they weren’t exactly friendly. But they weren’t not friendly, were they? Looking up at him she was a statue, marble, pale lips and all. Arthur realised that she didn’t look all that well. Her eyes were the darkest green he’d ever seen, like two forest pools in shadow, and they sat hollow in a face which lacked colour. Something felt off, felt wrong. Something tugged fiercely at the back of his mind, trying to make him think of something to do or say or remember. Nothing came, though. After she seemed to come back to herself she turned her head, wordlessly craning her neck so that he could see the dirt more easily.

Arthur raised his hands. He touched her shoulder with one and brushed her hair out of the way with the other, gently swiping at the coal dirt on her skin. She was warm, after all. Soft.

“Thank you.”

He withdrew his hands and stepped back and she remained facing away from him for just a moment, a moment that went on for half a dozen thuds of his heart. He tucked his bandana away into a pocket of his jacket, knowing that he shouldn’t have used it, really. But Constance said nothing as she passed him and went outside. Arthur followed, rubbing his chin.

“You mentioned ‘bout firewood, you choppin’ that all yourself for winter?”

“I hardly have another option.”

“How ‘bout I take care of some of that before I go.”

“You would do that?”

“Sure.”

They stood facing one another.

“If this is still some way to pay me for sewing your wounds up, you really needn’t. Truly. Mr. Morgan, Arthur. I’m well aware that it must seem strange to you, that I am alone out here, my husband absent, but I assure you I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” she took a breath, she first one since she had started speaking. They were the most words she had ever said to him at once. “If this is out of some form of pity-”

“Pity? I don’t pity you, ma’am. That ain’t it.”

“Then what? You think me weak?”

“No.”

“I’m not weak.”

“I don’t think you’re weak.”

“Then what?” she repeated.

“I think," he said, "maybe you’re lonely.”

They were standing on the porch of the cottage and she was breathing hard, like an indignant fire was lit in her belly and pushing the words hot past her dry lips. Arthur hadn’t exactly meant to say what he said but the words had come out and they was true; that was what tugged hard at the back of his mind. There was something intangible about her, something that made her seem as though she had one foot in this world and one in the next. That paleness was not just her complexion, though she had an English complexion to be sure, it was a faded quality, spectral. It made him think of the day he had ridden off and paused to watch her through the trees, staring at the sky. Looking at her, he thought she might just dissolve right out of the air, leave behind a pile of skirts on the floor and be gone with the breeze. Her cold detachment felt like a kind of sadness he didn’t understand, but wanted to stop, if he could.

Constance was very quiet after his words; her small hands had made small fists. 

“That’s very forward of you.”

“Didn’t mean to speak outta turn, I only-”

“You’re right,” she breathed. Arthur watched her quietly, saw something cracking her surface as she went on; “I’ve been too long in the mountains. Seth left me here and I have no earthly idea when he’ll return.”

Made sense. Not completely, he still wasn’t sure what was really going on but if she didn’t want to tell him that part then it didn’t seem right that he pry, besides she was just as likely to shut herself up again, weren’t she? Made him think of when he had first met Javier, Tilly even, some people just didn’t like to speak on their business and that was fine with him. Arthur supposed he could fit himself into that category, too. Most of the time it either weren’t relevant or plain no one cared that much about the whys and hows of his past, so they got to stay there. In the past. Constance had admitted that she was lonely and it shed new light on why she might have asked him in after he’d shadowed her home, maybe even on when she had put food in his stomach when she had sent him off after his brush with the O’Driscolls.

“Well. If he ain’t gonna be back in the next few days, you’re gonna run out of logs. Can’t have that now, can we?”

Constance nearly smiled again, but dropped her eyes, looking pained. Arthur nearly, so very nearly, put a hand on her shoulder, but forced himself not to, keeping his hands on his belt instead.

“It ain’t pity, Constance. Only want to lend a hand.”

Those green eyes lifted, dark enough to absorb light, dark enough to swallow him whole. She gave a tiny nod and then her chin lifted and she swept past him, a great swirl of skirts; “You’ll want the hatchet, then.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _No, I'm not afraid to disappear_  
>  \- I Know the End, Phoebe Bridgers

Each split log was the result of a long whistling sound and a _thwack_ as the axe arced through the air and landed on the crown of the wood, riving it in two. Constance had watched from a few paces back as Arthur hacked his way through some of the wood from the shed. He had taken his jacket and his hat off; the sun was strong and despite the cool mountain air she could see by the dappled sweat on his brow that he felt the heat of the afternoon as the shade from the surrounding forest had waned. After a short time, she had left him to his own devices, it truly seemed as though he meant to chop his way through the majority of her store for the winter and she was grateful. And uncomfortable. Propriety told her that admitting to any feeling whatsoever was an unseemly thing to do, she had grown up knowing the cool detachment of authority figures first and the compassion of her parents second. It was not that she had been unloved or ill-treated, she had been fortunate, blessed even, to have been born into a wealthy family with a loving mother and a doting father, even her grandmother in London had cared deeply in her own way, but emotions were not discussed. A woman in the upper echelons of London society was a _tableau vivant_ , a living picture. She could blink and breathe, smile and speak, but she was something to look at, the thoughts in her head were exactly that, in her head and not in her mouth.

Arthur had offered her a way to express how she felt without her having to say it herself, she had to wonder if he had spotted the fissure in her composure and split it with his words as he split the wood with the axe. American directness always appeared to catch her off guard. It left her feeling exposed. It was not an entirely unpleasant feeling, but she was mildly frightened by it. Perhaps there was a thrill in that, also.

Constance came down the steps and crossed the muddy yard, lifting her skirts a little to avoid a puddle; “This should be a fine match,” she said, striding over to him.

Arthur raked his hair back with one hand and followed it with his hat in the other, settling it back securely on his head, “What you got there?”

It was a button, she held it up between her fingers and then pointed at his black waistcoat with it. It was not exact, she didn’t have precisely the same buttons, but in her basket of various fastenings, needles, threads and thimbles, she had found one that was the same sort of brass and the same sort of size, if not the same pattern.

“For me?”

Constance gestured to his vest again with a sliver of a smile; “It won’t take me a moment.”

“Look that scruffy, huh?”

“Well,” she let that one word speak for itself and he laughed a little, nodding. After a pause she went on, standing her ground: “Outlaw of some description or not, you can’t ride around missing a button. It’s scandalous.”

“Ah, well, don’t want to be _scandalous_ now.”

There was that mischief in his eyes when he spoke, they lit up, his face transformed completely from a sour, serious cowboy to a man ten years younger, charismatic and handsome. It made him seem more real; she was catching a glimpse of sides that were hidden from view and that made him more solid, less imagined. A feverish thought engulfed her a mind in a flash: Was he real at all? Or was she having some sort of hallucination brought on by lack of food or water, or her long days of isolation that seemed to bleed together like watercolours on a canvass. It didn’t seem possible that they had met, that he stood before her, corporeal.

“Alright,” he conceded, “seemin’ as I know you can hold a needle and thread.”

“Yes, you wouldn’t want someone to ruin your perfectly good, threadbare vest.”

“This is my favourite vest I’ll have you know, madam.”

He was funny. Constance laughed, actually laughed, at his feigned indignation. He waved a hand at her and started to unbutton his vest, turning from where he had been chopping wood, towards the porch of the cottage to get out of the sun. She followed him; the metal button held between her fingertips warm. It was hot, really. She had not realised how strong the sun was and as she made to follow him, she looked up into the sky, thinking how much she was beginning to sweat in the afternoon sunlight.

Constance saw white. A deluge of pale radiance washed over her vision and her body faded away.

Arthur’s hand was on her elbow. “Woah there, careful.”

“Pardon me,” she whispered, hollow boned and sick.

“’S’okay, just take a minute.”

The trees and the sky came back into focus, white receding. Her knees had buckled and he had caught her with one strong hand on her arm, the other hovering near her waist, ready to save her from dropping into the mud in a heap. Constance raised a hand to her head, pressing her fingers into one of her eyes where a pain had started to lance through her skull.

“Just a little faint.”

“Yeah.”

Though he was agreeing with her, Constance did not need to see his face to know that his eyes were on her, examining. She did not dare meet them, not because she was afraid of what he might be thinking, but because she knew that it would be a reflection of her own anxieties. It had been a while since the hunger pangs had come and gone, as though her body had given up trying to tell her that she needed to eat, realising that her stubborn determination to starve would always overpower any rumbling below her ribs. That did not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that her body was in any way well. Constance was tired often, weak frequently, she slept poorly and her muscles ached, but not all the time. There were periods where she felt nothing whatsoever, where there were no borders between her and the air or the earth, she tried to focus on things that made her feel solid. Her grip on a coffee cup. The burn of smoke in her nose. King’s mane between her fingers. Fleeting moments grounded in reality.

It was hard to articulate, even to herself, the sensation not that she wanted to die, but that she found existing to be exhausting.

Happiness had long bled out of her; she had forgotten what that ought to be and no longer sought it out. With her family gone, she did not feel beholden to anyone to continue her existence, but there were times the guilt of her wasted life weighed on her so heavy she was moved to do something, anything, to eat a handful of blackberries, to travel into Annesburg, telling herself that she would muster what steel there was in her and find a way out of the gloom. That steel soon rusted, though, crumbled away to dust.

“I’m all right,” she said, blinking hard to make the world sharpen again. It took a moment to realise that she was sitting on the front steps of the cottage and that he was still holding her elbow. Constance straightened her spine and pulled her arm from his hand with a gracious thanks; “Just a funny turn.”

Arthur was frowning beneath the brim of his hat; he was crouched in front of her and slightly to the side, he looked as though he was chewing his cheek. He rested his forearms on his knees but didn’t speak for a long moment, looking off into the trees rather than staring at her as she composed herself.

“Must get a lot of animals runnin’ ‘round these woods.”

“Oh?” An odd observation. “Yes, I suppose so. I don’t take much notice.”

“C’mon, I’m gonna show you somethin’.”

Slowly, he rose from his crouch and held out his hand to help her off the step. Since she could not think quickly enough to refuse, her thoughts still muddled and watery, Constance gingerly took his hand. Arthur guided her a few paces and when she was steady enough to walk without help, she followed him past the wooden buildings of Cedar Fell and into the trees beyond.

It was cool under the shade of the trees and once they had walked a short way, she could hear the falls themselves fizzling between the trunks, bouncing back and forth against the rocks and slopes of the mountains. Out of the heat she did feel better and she could string words together in her head more cohesively.

Arthur was speaking over his shoulder in a church voice; “You ever hunted a rabbit?”

“There isn’t much cause for rabbit hunting in London, I’m afraid.”

“Hm,” he rumbled.

They stopped a fair piece away from Cedar Fell. Arthur gestured for her to stay where she was and she obeyed, curious as she peered between the trees. Presumably they were looking for rabbits, but Constance was unsure what exactly he was getting at with this exercise. If he looked at her and thought he saw some sort of huntress he was sorely mistaken. It had taken just about all her wits and strength to keep her horse alive and healthy; the animal ate better than she did and certainly seemed happier, and that was about all she knew of nature aside from the few plants she was now familiar enough with from the book. Hunting of any sort was beyond her.

Holding her skirts up a few inches from the forest floor, she waited until Arthur joined her, moving much more quietly than she had expected of someone his height and build. He stood just behind her, to the left a little, so that when he spoke it was into her ear, his breath warm on her neck.

“Good place for a snare, here,” he said. “Don’t need to go shootin’ rabbits to catch them for supper.”

“I’m not hunting rabbits.”

“You can’t survive on coffee and smokes.”

Constance turned her head to look at him, her lips pressed tart. He was close, their faces inches from one another. Bold as brass, wasn’t he. The way he spoke was accusatory and compassionate in tandem and it confused her. Either way she knew that he knew something was deeply wrong with her, that she was frail as a beam of light through the trees, diaphanous. When he looked at her she felt him looking into her, no, _seeing_ into the depths of her. It was that which made her scalp tingle and her stomach clench when he was near. Broken people could sense one another, could they not? The cracked and tarnished saw in others those same breaks and bruises. Arthur looked at her and she knew that _he_ knew something was off. Wasn’t there something dark hanging over him too? Wasn’t that why he was here, again, with her? Some penance he was paying not to her, but to something greater and more godly than either of them?

She bristled.

“I appear to have managed thus far.”

Arthur held her gaze with steel and only looked away when he raised an arm and pointed over her shoulder towards a rustling in the deep underbrush of the woods; “Just use one of these young trees over there, the saplings, use them to set a trap. I’m gonna show you. It’s easy.”

“Why?” she whispered.

“Why not?”

There was no good answer for that, no answer that she wanted to share. Words jammed up in her throat, tangled behind her tongue. Why? It echoed around the inside of her skull and all she could do was watch as Arthur moved past her in the direction he had pointed, reaching into his satchel to pull out a length of twine in a neat little bundle. He was speaking but she couldn’t hear him, she followed on stiff limbs, her head swimming, asking why a thousand times over as the image of her father’s smashed skull burst across her mind, sharp and red.

Walking back, the afternoon light was fading. Arthur had spent the whole day with her.

At Cedar Fell, Arthur took his vest off and folded it up in as small a square as he could. He handed it to her. Constance took it from him, a hand on the top and one on the bottom, their fingers touched. They had spent a good amount of time in the woods, eventually she had come back to her body and he had repeated the steps she had missed with a calm patience she would not have attached to an outlaw of any kind. But, it seemed, Arthur Morgan was not an outlaw of just any kind. He had shown her how to make a noose and a latch, how to tie the right knots. How to skin the animal once it was caught. That part made her feel sick again, she didn’t think that she would be able to stomach ripping the flesh off of any creature, least of all a rabbit. Still, she thanked him, promised him she would think about what he had shown her.

“There,” he said. “You fix that button on for me an’ I’ll be back to pick it up, look in on you for a spell.”

“You don’t have to do that. Really. You don’t know me.”

“And you don’t know me, you didn’t know me when you dragged me in off that road and y’didn’t know me when you sewed up my side and put food in my stomach.” He gripped the vest tighter a moment in such a way that his fingers curled around the side of her palm just a hair, a fraction. Whether he was gripping the vest or gripping her, it was hard to tell. “You did your charitable deed, Miss. Let me do mine.”

Ma’am. Constance was married, it ought to be ma’am, but she didn’t correct him, not even to hear him call her by her given name again. It had been such a long time since anyone had called her Miss, it reminded her of the time before she had become Mrs Everly, when she had been Miss West. A lifetime ago. Eons. Lord, she felt ancient. Ancient and speechless, as Arthur grasped his vest and her hands between them and continued speaking.

“I’ll look in on you when I can ‘til your husband comes back. I’m sure he wouldn’t want nothin’ to happen to you out here, ‘s the least I can do.”

“You keep saying that.”

At least take the money. At least take the book. At least let me escort you home.

“Well. This time I mean it.”

When she watched him ride out of Cedar Fell, Constance raised her hand to wave him goodbye. Arthur raised a hand back, a casual, easy motion, fluid and natural. It made her ache somewhere so deep inside her chest it felt like it was coming from the bones of her ribcage. Trying to put a pin in the feeling and figure out where it came from was difficult but she stood for a while looking at the empty space where she had last seen him, a crack of blue sky between a tree and a boulder which he had filled for a brief moment before he disappeared down the path. This time she knew she would see him again, he had told her so, and unlike anyone else in her life, Constance trusted that he would prove true to his word. He would be back. She would be waiting.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _So, collect your scars and wear 'em well  
>  Your blood's as good an ink as any_  
>  \- The Crooked Kind, Radical Face

It took several days to return to the camp at Horseshoe Overlook and Arthur spent much of that time contemplating the time he had spent at Cedar Fell. While his thoughts and his time were his own, before he had to return his focus to the gang fully, involving himself – or being involved in – whatever schemes and plans the rest of them was plotting, he could process his thoughts and feelings about his short time with Mrs Everly. That first night sleeping out under the stars after he had left the mountains, he fed and watered Boadicea and then fed and watered himself, and sat down with his journal.

> _Constance remains alone in the mountains. Mrs Everly, that is. Thought she might be in danger of robbers at first, now I fear she is in danger of starving to death. Woman is sickly pale and thin as a reed and she near fainted when last I saw her. Troubles me. That husband of hers best return soon or else he might find no one waiting for him but a corpse._
> 
> _Wonder what kind of man leaves his wife in such a state, fending for herself with no notion on how to survive. She is a city lady and it is no place for her to be._
> 
> _Made her laugh, though. Woman has a pretty smile._

Arthur did not draw her again but he did think about her for a time as he sat by the fire, far out in the wilderness. Someone as sad as that, someone who was so much more an echo of a person than of flesh and blood, what should move a person like that to save another? Guilt? Fear? Maybe it did not matter in the end. All that mattered was that he was alive and so was she, for the time being. He intended, fully, to return to the cabin in the mountains to make certain she remained that way. Like he said, it was the least he could do.

Yet, he simply could not help himself but wonder.

Time moved on, as it was wont to do. Arthur continued to fill the pages of his journal.

> _Colm O’Driscoll slipped through our fingers once more and I saw my life slip through mine. That gentle buffoon we kidnapped up in the mountains took us to a cabin. We were planning to kill Colm but he had just gone elsewhere. We shot a bunch of his boys and one was about to end my life when Kieran shot him._
> 
> _This FEUD, it’s bled out from Dutch & Colm’s mutual hatred into a loathing that permeates all of us and all of them. _
> 
> _Still, I found quite a shotgun in the cabin._

Arthur wouldn’t have liked to say it out loud, Hell he barely thought it inside his own mind, but he had warmed to Kieran some that day. A buffoon he was, but a harmless one. Not to that O’Driscoll he had shot, but in every other way. It seemed pretty clear that he had fallen in with them boys one way or another and it was not a life that he had been raised in but more one he had been reduced to, somehow.

Still had to keep an eye on him around camp, though, couldn’t take the risk that he would somehow end up back with the O’Driscolls. Probably it wouldn’t be through his choice, but sometimes things just went bac and before a person could find their footing, they was neck deep in hot water. Arthur didn’t so much think that Kieran would rat them out on purpose if he did end up back with them, more that his softness and his desire to survive would outweigh much of anything else.

Given enough time, maybe he would end up as one of the gang, really one of them. That didn’t happen overnight, though, and especially not with someone who had once run with the O’Driscoll Boys. Against their will or not.

So, he teased him some around camp, let him know that they was still watching what he was doing, but if the boy got into trouble Arthur would make sure that they got him out of it.

> _Herr Strauss is back lending money and I’m back collecting it._
> 
> _The work mostly revolts me and shames me. Somehow, robbing people honestly with a gun and fists is less repellent than robbing them fully in accordance with the law._
> 
> _It’ll be the usual sort of desperados – sick farmers, pregnant maids, lovesick young men, and other dupes desperate enough and stupid enough to take Strauss’ terms. A insurer’s life may be a comfortable one, but it is foul work._

Having spent the better part of a week tracking down Herr Strauss’ debtors, Arthur spent a night in a real bed so that he might have a bath and wash himself of the grimy feeling the job left on his skin. That had become a habit of his. Never worked, mind. No matter how hard he scrubbed away at his flesh he felt the cold, clammy grubbiness of debt collecting all over his body. Poor misguided fools that took money off of Strauss weren’t bad people really, not like him. They was just in a bad spot and happened to have the misfortune of meeting the German man with his ledger and his _terms_. Still, as Dutch would not cease in telling them all at camp, they needed money if they were ever going to escape the Pinkertons for good and get out West. So, debt collecting Arthur went, and into the camp funds the money was deposited.

Arthur was riding Boadicea at a slow and steady pace back to camp from one such trip when his thoughts turned to the German man in Annesburg, Mr. Schneider. Though he had not had much conversation with the man he had been listening in on how he talked with Mrs. Everly and decided that he seemed a good sort. By now, he thought, she had probably been back to the general store to sell some more of those shirts. Making a living, small as it was, would ensure she had food to get her by, even if she had not taken up his advice on snaring rabbits. Least Schneider would keep an eye on her, that was good to know.

It would be a while before Constance Everly entered his thoughts again, though, because another woman soon occupied that space; she slid into his life like a knife between the ribs, easily and quietly, with the opening of a letter. It was waiting for him in camp one day; he returned from hunting with Charles to find it there and he had felt the eyes of those in camp upon him as he crossed from the hitching posts to his cot. They knew who the letter was from. They knew that if Mary asked him to come, a-running he would go. Even as he had read the letter, Arthur knew that he would do what she asked of him, he would go to her any day, anywhere. His heart thudded against his ribs to read her handwriting which was not remotely as sloppy as she opined it to be in the letter itself.

Mary. She filled his mind, crushed his heart.

When she beckoned, he followed.

> _Saw Mary again. I feel like the luckiest man alive and I feel like a fool. That woman confuses me and plays me for a fiddle like no one else alive. Her little brother Jamie had joined some religious order and needed saving, or so she and the god awful DADDY seemed to have thought. I took him home, after a pathetic little squabble. Poor boy. Wonder what will become of him. Education and an unpleasant father have been a terrible curse for him I fear._
> 
> _As for Mary, I hope I will not make a god awful fool of myself once more, but somehow I imagine I shall._

Arthur wrote their initials on either side of a heart, feeling all the foolish, boyish feelings he had ever felt as a young man in love. To the left of the entry he drew a picture of Mary and it was only partially from their recent meeting for he felt he could recall her face at any time, any moment, anywhere. Such was the hold she had on him.

Jamie was a good boy, Arthur had always liked him the most, after his older sister, and thought that had the boy not been inflicted with the father he had, he might have turned out happier. Might have known himself better, at least. It seemed the boy was searching for something that society could not provide him and that father of his had pushed him to the point he felt he had nothing left to live for. Mary was still trying to hold the whole family together. Fools, the lot of them. Him, too. For off he went to bring the young lad back from the cult in the mountains.

Mary was grateful, of course, but that was all. Her brother had asked if they was sweet on each other again but no, it wasn’t like that. Course, in his heart Arthur knew that he’d never not been sweet on her, that it was more than that, that he loved her. Sometimes he didn’t want to, there was a sting when his thoughts turned to her at times, but it wasn’t something he could change, it was like she was burned into him forever, a thorn in his paw he could never get out.

_“Oh, you’ll never change. I know that.”_

Her final words to him on the train rang in his ears all the way back to camp, were still there the next morning when he woke. No, he supposed he wouldn’t.

After that he decided to leave camp for a while again, went looking for work and went looking for the shootists that writer had told him about in the saloon, thinking that might offer a good distraction. Turned out he was right; Emmett Granger was a horrible piece of shit and for once Arthur was more than happy to shoot a man; Billy Midnight was a sad old drunk eaten to the bones by guilt; Black Belle intimidated and impressed him and he was happy to see off bounty hunters with her and then watch her ride away.

Arthur drew pictures of all of them, musing on the lies that had been told about this so-called gunslinger Calloway and how little he wanted to go all the way out to the mountains to look for Flaco Hernandez. Felt like he had only just thawed out from their sojourn up there. So, he put it off a time. Along the way of looking for the three he had already tracked down he had put a bit of money in his own pocket and a bit in the pocket of the gang, but he knew they needed to get a few big scores if they was ever to make their dreams and plans into reality.

Much has he knew the sick feeling would return, he followed through on another of Herr Strauss’ debts:

> _I went to call in a loan from some farmer, local do gooder. Think I’d seen him in Valentine before when I was fighting that big fella. He begged and coughed and spluttered and I beat him half to death. Such is life. Such is the world. His boy looked at me like I was the devil and perhaps for him I was. The whole thing confused me. Maybe that’s wrong. The whole thing revolted me/my part. These sad, desperate bastards, their silly expectation of life and their tawdry reality. The unkindness of existence – I can handle that just fine. But I do not love it, nor those who try to make things otherwise, I guess._

Just like that, it had been some weeks since he had thought about Mrs. Everly in more than a fleeting moment. Couldn’t say what it was that brought her back to his mind but Arthur stood in the general store in Valentine, feeling sick and haggard by his work for Strauss, and wondered if she was all right, if she was alive, even. Jamie’s words made his skin tingle as they burst bright through his mind; _I don’t want to live any more_. Was that how Constance felt? Was that the root of her starvation? Those sad eyes? Was her husband even real? There had been no trace of the man the few times he had been in the cabin and as he pondered on all he had seen of her, all they had spoken of, he started to question what he really knew of the woman.

Least there was an excuse to go call on her again; he had left his vest with her for that very reason, so that he could return. He had meant it when he’d said he would look in on her every so often, make sure she was doing okay until her husband came back from whatever business had kept him away so long, it was just things got out of hand with the gang sometimes, he had to make sure, now more than ever, that they stayed on something of an even keel. Was getting harder and harder these days.

Arthur paid for the supplies he needed for the road but paused before he left the store as something caught his eye. A fishing rod. On an impulse he picked it up and took it back to the counter.

“You like fishing, mister?” the clerk asked him.

“Sure, I like it fine but I already got a rod.” Arthur paid the man. “This one ain’t for me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi :3 so this is probably going to go past 25 chapters at this point, i'm just not quite solid on how many it will actually be yet; i had already extended it past 20 which was the initial lie i told myself about the length lmaooo. i just thought i would tag a little note on here to also say thanks so much to anyone reading this who has been leaving me comments or kudos bc it's such a nice feeling to see that at least some people are enjoying reading this as much as i'm enjoying writing it!
> 
> there's a little more foundation building to come with the next few chapters before the actual plot starts (there really is a plot that extends past pining and fleeting~ touches~) i'm just enjoying this nice period of time when no one is sick and nothing is terrible but it won't last heuheu >) <33


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Follow me home, pretend you  
>  Found somebody to mend you_  
>  \- Numbers, Daughter

Weather was kind to him on the way to Cedar Fell. Clear skies, warm sun. At a certain point there was a chill that came into the air due to the altitude, but far from causing him to feel cold it was a balm on his hot skin. Was a good thing he had stayed to chop all that wood when last he had been up this way for the nights were much less forgiving this far North and he could imagine that cabin getting awful cold, especially when it rained, and Lord help her when the snows came. Place was likely to look like Colter given a few days of storm clouds.

Constance was outside already when he came up through the posts: She was looking after her horse, a tall stallion in a deep chestnut brown which shone under the brush she was running over him. Arthur couldn’t hear what she was saying but he could see her lips moving at a distance and had to imagine she was speaking soothingly to the animal. There was a warm smile on her face. So, she wasn’t completely alone out here but a horse didn’t make the best conversationalist, Arthur could attest to that. He spoke to Boadicea plenty but, as yet, she had never spoken back. When Constance saw him, she turned fully to face his approach, surprise in her doe-eyes.

Arthur felt sunburn stretch tight over his nose as he smiled a little and raised a hand to her in greeting; “Afternoon.”

“Good afternoon, Arthur,” she said, polite and cool as ever. “It’s been some time, how are you?”

“Well, thank you.”

The stallion gave a snort as she patted him gently, pulling away from her task with the brush in her hand, hooked over her thin fingers. Arthur, who had slid out of his saddle, led Boadicea over to the both of them, the woman gestured to the post, inviting him to tie his horse up near the stallion. Meant he could get a better look at Constance. She had on an apron over her dress which was a fine blue check garment with a frilly lace collar parted at the front, she slid the horse brush into the pocket on the front of it and wiped her hands against the white material, leaving streaks of grease and muck behind. Still looked eerie somehow, her eyes too big for their sockets, her lips a dry paper-colour. Not many rabbits been trapped in the woods around the cabin, it seemed. Seemed she was worse than ever, if he was honest.

“You’ve come back for your vest at last, then? It truly must be your favourite, I thought I shouldn’t see you again.” Bony hands settled on bony hips.

“Been near witless without it, miss.”

There was her smile, though. Still pretty. Actually, he hadn’t done it justice in his journal.

“All right, then, come along.”

Constance turned to go back to the cabin and, after retrieving the folded-up fishing rod he had brought for her from Boadicea’s saddle bag, he followed after her. In fact, Arthur found himself walking a pace or two closer than he usually would have because he was concerned she might faint again, or nearly faint at least. But faint she did not; they ascended the steps into the cabin and she left the door open behind her for him. Arthur closed it gently while she untied her apron and draped it over the back of a chair around the now-familiar table in her kitchen. She beckoned him over to the fireplace and he followed.

His vest was in a box she had near the sofa and she took it out, gave it a gentle shake and held it up for him. Arthur took it with a low whistle; “Looks good as new,” he told her.

“It doesn’t, but thank you. The button is as close as I would be able to find, I think. Mr. Schneider didn’t have any to match, nor could he order any on my behalf. I sewed the others on more securely.”

The buttons, brass with studded details, shone like she had polished them as well as sewing them on more securely, as she had said. The one button which did not match the others didn’t stand out all that much and he didn’t mind anyhow, fancy clothes weren’t exactly what he wore day to day, they’d only get blood and dirt all over them. This vest was one of his older ones but he had only been slightly teasing when he had said that it was his favourite, he liked it a lot. He noticed, then, that she had repaired the patch where the fabric had been worn away. At some point or another he had caught in on something whilst out robbing and the thread had pulled out, being the idiot he was, he had pulled at the thread to stop the damage but had only made it worse. Ms. Grimshaw had snipped it clear when he had gotten back to camp and told him he was as bad as child the way he wore out clothes.

“You patched it, too?”

“I darned it. I had some matching thread, seemed a waste to replace the button and not take care of the rest of it.”

“We both know how you feel ‘bout wasting thread.”

She smiled. He smiled. They held their gaze a moment and then she cleared her throat and turned away, heading off to the kitchen. Arthur regarded the vest again for a moment and then folded it up and set it down on the sofa; she was pouring water into glasses in the kitchen from a jug, setting one down for him as he made to join her.

“Brought somethin’ for you.”

“Oh?” Constance sipped her water.

Arthur took the fishing rod from his satchel and unfolded it, slotting the pieces together so that it was extended to its full length. He held it out. She was frowning, looking from the fishing rod to his face and then back again.

“A fishing rod,” she said slowly. “Arthur, I think you may have the wrong impression of me when it comes to hunting and fishing.”

“Naw, listen. Hunting rabbits is prob’ly a bit much ain’t it?” Probably, she didn’t have the strength needed to skin a rabbit even if she did catch one, and he was somewhat sceptical that she had even attempted that much in the weeks that had passed. “Fishing’s easier. ‘Sides, meant to be some good spots up here.”

“Are there?”

“From what I hear.”

Slowly, she set her water glass down and paced around the table to where he was standing, looking at the fishing rod in his hands. Arthur could tell she was weighing his words at least a little, she had a line between her dark brows which he took to mean she was thinking hard. Still, she didn’t reach out to take it from him, only looked up at him with a soft sigh.

“Are you going to take no for an answer?”

“Only if it’s truly adamant.”

Must’ve been the right answer for though she did not smile again he saw something in her eyes that might be described as softness, a warmth in the rising of her brows that he thought could be gratitude or relief? Maybe? Silence kept him in limbo a bit longer as she eyed the rod.

“All right,” she said, taking it off him at last. “But you really must stop all this, I am perfectly capable.”

Arthur hooked his thumbs into his belt as she examined the fishing rod more closely. Just who did she think she was fooling? When she started to dismantle it, he moved past her to pick up the glass of water she had poured for him. It wasn’t cold but it was wet and it was welcome.

“That’s settled then. Want me to help you saddle that horse of yours?”

“Where are we going?”

“Fishing,” he said. “Wouldn’t dream of leavin’ you without a little instruction. Now, I ain’t a great fisherman myself, but I know more than nothin’ which is how much I’m presuming you know.”

“Fishing? Now?”

Arthur put the empty glass down. “If you’d really rather not, I ain’t gonna force you, but you might like it. Never know.”

That was how Arthur had approached much of his own life; if he didn’t know exactly how something would turn out then that was okay, he figured he would find out one way or another and if he didn’t like the outcome none, then he just wouldn’t do whatever it was again. Not if he could help it, anyways. Not if he was the one making the decisions. Over the years he had gotten into more than a few scrapes because of his adventurous spirit, which is what he preferred to call that which others might deem his reckless nature, but he had seen some pretty amazing things, too. Done a lot of interesting things, met a lot of interesting people. Never hurt to try something, he thought. Least, that was a saying he had heard, he didn’t know too much about it being true, he got hurt plenty, but he didn’t think something as simple as fishing was gonna end up with either one of them hurt. Sides, Jamie’s words were still crawling up the walls of his skull; I don’t want to live any more. Arthur couldn’t get the boy’s distress out of his mind, couldn’t help but see something in Constance’s eyes that reminded him of it. There was some kind of quiet panic in her gaze which unsettled him.

“All right,” she said again, catching him off his guard. “But I can saddle my own horse.”

Arthur nodded, trying to hide his smile by lifting a hand to rub the stubble on his chin.

They set out together, riding two abreast down the muddy trail. Constance’s horse was a big beast, so they were fairly level as they went, enough that they could converse as easily as if they was standing and talking. Arthur told her again how he hadn’t done too much fishing but that his father had taught him what little he did know. Hosea was who he thought of, not Lyle Morgan. He didn’t offer their names, or explain anything further to the woman riding beside him, just that his father had taught him. Their conversation was easy, soft. They rode in silence for long moments without speaking at all. It was, for want of a better word, nice.

Arthur led the way to a mountain lake where they dismounted and tethered the horses to trees before picking their way down to the water’s edge. The sun shone brightly and glittered on the ripples of the water, Constance held up a hand to shield her eyes from the brightness, her fishing rod in the other, and he didn’t disturb her, stood watching the lake in silences himself a spell. Awful pretty, up in the mountains. Awful quiet. He showed her how to use bait – didn’t have much else but cheese and a bit of bread but that was fine – and how to cast the line out. That was, in truth, almost as much as he knew himself, bar what Hosea had shown him about reeling in, but he figured best to get the easy bit done first.

“You don’t got to put much force behind it, not really,” he explained.

Constance reeled in the line and then set it up to cast again with a furrow of concentration between her brows. Arthur moved so he was standing behind her. He put his hand gently on her shoulders and felt her stop moving.

“Stay straight like this, feet just as they is,” she hummed in agreement. “When you cast out, just move like this.”

Arthur gave her shoulders ever such a gentle push to show her what he meant, and she went with it, leaning into his hands, even. Arthur stayed there a moment longer, the heat of her skin warming his hands. He could smell her hair, not perfumed but floral, like meadow flowers. It made his throat tight.

He stepped away, gestured for her to show him again and she threw the line back over her shoulder before she launched it out over the water. It hit the surface with a satisfying plunk. Arthur looked back to her with a smile and saw her face was flushed rose, her eyes dark and lively. The devil must’ve been watching them on account of the thoughts that came into his head in that moment. He cleared his throat, turned away and picked up his own fishing rob. They stood near to one another, near enough that he could keep an eye on what she was doing so he could give her any pointers as might occur to him. When it came to reeling in, he dropped his rod and went to her side to give her a hand, placing a hand on the rod to guide it while she furiously span the reel. When the fish came out of the water she gave a shriek of joy that split his ears but made him laugh loud enough to spook whatever fish was left.

It was for supper so he had to show her how to kill it. Only time he bothered on killing the things was when he intended to eat them and he told her as much. Said he’d show her how to cook them too, but that it was real easy.

They caught a couple more before calling it a day.

Arthur felt somewhat better about things, not just Constance herself who seemed to have a better colour about her after the afternoon’s adventure, but about the gang too, Dutch, all of it. A little time in the mountains was refreshing, felt like he could think a bit clearer. Instead of riding straight back to her home, they were walked along the path, their horses led by the reins.

“It’s funny,” Constance said.

“What is?”

“You and me. I’ve never known someone who is so…”

“Rough?”

“No, that’s not what I mean at all. You’re so… free. In your thinking, in your actions.”

“I don’t feel so free these days.”

Constance nodded but he didn’t think she could really understand what he was saying, least not how he meant it. Or maybe she did, in her own way. Didn’t seem like she was all that free herself. Something had to be keeping her tethered to this place, something powerful. Love? Didn’t seem like she was all that happy if she was in love with her absent husband. Then again, Arthur knew himself to love Mary and he was nigh on miserable as a result.

“Don’t imagine you get a lot of friends visiting you out here,” he commented.

“Most of them are in England or New York or Saint Denis. I write them but, no, they don’t visit. All the better, really.” When he looked at her, questioning her meaning silently, she went on; “I strongly doubt they would understand any of this, I barely understand it myself, but I shouldn’t be able to stand the looks they would give me.”

“Fancy types, your friends?”

“Very much so.”

More contemplative silence.

“You ain’t out here ‘cause you wanna be, are you?”

“No. Not really.”

He wanted to ask why, but didn’t.

They walked together in the setting sun, beams of golden light striking through the trees. Stunning. They shone in Constance’s hair, making the dark curls of it burn a deep red that was hard to see most of the time. As an evening chill curled its way down the mountainside, they mounted their horses again and rode the rest of the way at a fair clip.

Back at Cedar Fell they passed under the arch and dismounted but though Constance took her horse into the small stable, Arthur stayed with Boadicea, giving the mare a gentle pat on the neck. Couldn’t stay, needed to get on and he had the feeling that the woman knew as much for she came right out of the stable again, before removing the tack from the stallion. She was wiping her hands against one another, fish scales glinting like jewels in the waning sun.

“It’s been a pleasure, as always, Mr Morgan.”

“Naw, the pleasure’s mine, Miss.”

Silence made the air between them thick.

“Would you write me, maybe?” Arthur asked quickly, before fear could stop him. “You said you write your friends. Might be that I can’t call on you too often, but if you would write me… well. I would like that, I reckon.”

Constance’s hands had stopped moving, fingers resting on one palm, but far from freezing completely she started to smile, small and warm, a curve to her lips that made her eyes crinkle at the edges, a real smile.

“I reckon I would like that, too.”

Arthur laughed some, the words ‘I reckon’ didn’t sound all the right coming out on a bone-china accent like hers.

“Pray, where should I send these letters?” she was smiling, laughing almost. “I’m assuming you’ve no fixed address.”

Arthur rubbed the back of his neck; “Could say that. Send ‘em to Riggs Station, made out to Tacitus Kilgore. I’ll get ‘em one way or another.”

“Tacitus Kilgore?” Her smile faded into one of confusion but she dipped her head all the same. “All right. Yes, I’ll do that.”

Much as he would’ve stayed with her a while longer, he knew he had to leave, had work to do. He hoisted himself back up on Boadicea, turned the mare around on the spot. Constance was looking up at him, hands on her hips, wisps of hair falling free from where she had knotted it back in a crumpled chignon. He had to leave. Something tugged at him to stay.

He raised his hand, smiling down at her in the gloaming.

“See ya ‘round, Nancy.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Baby, I can't help you out  
>  While she's still around_  
>  \- I Know, Fiona Apple

> _Dear Arthur,_
> 
> _You may be pleased to know that I have taken up fishing with great enthusiasm, however the fish avoid me with enthusiasm in kind and so I am not sure whether this shall be a partnership of good fortune for me. It shall certainly be one for the fish._
> 
> _Mr. Everly remains away from Cedar Fell. My days are mostly quiet and my nights ever more so. Rain appears to give way to snow here and there and, in the weeks since your last visit, the weather has turned for the worse and then back again. It appears the Heavens cannot make up their mind. At present the sun is near melting the window panes. Despite this, Mr Schneider has insisted I have supper with him and his good wife this coming week end as a result of the ghastly downpours and so I will send on your regards as I am certain he will ask and certain that you would give them. He will most certainly send his own._
> 
> _I do hope my letter finds you well, and to hear from you soon._
> 
> _Yours,  
> _ _Nancy_

Arthur read the letter once and then twice. He folded it up and slipped it into the back pages of his journal. Part of him had thought she wouldn’t write him, didn’t know why really. Well, no. That was a lie. Part of him thought she wouldn’t waste her time writing to him of all people. When he had said that he was rough, he’d meant it. It was clear as day to him that Nancy was from money, she talked real proper, like she was real educated, she was sharp and clever, had a manner about her that was starched and precise. Schooled.

Why would a woman like that write to him? An outlaw, a criminal, a bad man. She knew what he was, they’d talked about it. But she still thought he was polite enough to send his regards to the general store owner in Annesburg and she weren't wrong, he hoped the man and his poor wife were doing well. Yet, even with what he felt were some misconceptions on her part about who he was if not what he was, there was something there between them. Something that made his neck warm when he read her letter, made his throat dry. 

_Yours, Nancy_

‘Cept she wasn’t his. She was married, and he was an outlaw. A bad man.

Arthur flipped to the most recent journal entry he had made.

> _Went off drinking with young Lenny. Thanks to my own peculiar genius for trouble when drunk, the evening did not go quite according to plan, but somehow neither of us got killed or arrested for murder, I mean we got arrested of course but not for murder, at least I don’t think it was for murder because they let us out. Whole thing is a bit of a blur._
> 
> _Somehow, I don’t imagine that the saloon owner in Valentine likes me very much after the mayhem I have caused here._

With a sigh, he closed his journal. Nancy might not think too well of him if she knew the reality of the things he did when he wasn’t up there with her. Somehow it felt like he was keeping secrets from her and somehow that didn’t feel good. Or right. That free-thinking she had praised him for, it wasn’t so appreciated down here. Society didn’t want people to think or act free at all. When he did what he thought was right he was wrong and when he did wrong by his own code them law men would probably tell him he was right. Gave him headaches thinking on it.

Looking up, he saw that Karen and Sean were drinking at the table near Pearson’s wagon, Tilly and Mary-Beth were taking a stroll around the camp outskirts, and Uncle was asleep at the stump of a tree. Arthur was sat in his tent, what passed for a tent, trying to write back to Nancy but reading her letter again had made him think on the last little while since he’d seen her.

> _Dear Nancy,_
> 
> _Your letter finds me well. It finds me free of snow at least, which is well enough. Will you have enough of that firewood to see you through the coming winter? If business brings me to the mountains again, I shall surely visit you and make good the job._
> 
> _I am pleased to know that Mr Schneider and his wife are able to have supper with you since Mr Everly has not yet returned to Cedar Fell. Have you any notion on when he might be home?_
> 
> _Thank you for sending my regards to Mr Schneider. He seemed a good man. I liked him. Glad that he and his wife are keeping close their wayward souls. Is that what you called it?_
> 
> _Stay out of the snow when it comes, it’ll freeze you to the bone._
> 
> _Arthur_

Dreadful country, those mountains. Arthur had heard that a gang out there was starting to get the attention of the law drawn on them. Didn’t know much more than that, there was gang all over the country, being hunted into their graves, but he grew concerned knowing there was one so close to his friend. Maybe he would try and force a bit of business that way, just to look in on her.

In the meantime, he sent her his letter back, clumsy as it was and poorly written, addressed to Annesburg Station.

#

> _Dear Arthur,_
> 
> _Thank you for returning my letter. I wondered that you might not have the time or opportunity to do so and had been preparing myself for a time spent concerning myself with your whereabouts and health._
> 
> _I will have plenty of firewood for the coming winter, though your concern is well taken, thank you. Hard snows, I am told in town, are still quite some time away and I have taken it upon myself to add to the log pile in anticipation of such. Before you inquire, I do indeed have all my fingers, toes, limbs and extremities!_
> 
> _As for Mr. Everly, I am afraid I do not have the first idea when he might return. I fear, too, that I have not been wholly transparent with you as to his business and locations as I admit I do not know the full extent of them myself. If he were dead, I would not know it. I would not wish ill on him or any other person, no one is beyond saving, are they not? Yet, I cannot bring myself to say that I miss him, overmuch. The solitude is hard at times, it makes me terribly sad to be so far from the life I had known before Cedar Fell, but the absence of Seth Everly is a blessing from God Himself, and I would not count it as anything other._
> 
> _Please forgive me if you feel betrayed, it was not my intention to obfuscate his shortcomings. He is still my husband and it would have been improper in the highest degree to speak poorly of him when you and I were first acquainted._
> 
> _Travel safely._
> 
> _Yours,  
> _ _Nancy_

Dawn was breaking as she wrote her letter and Nancy sat for a short time reading it back to herself. Arthur only asked when Seth would be back because he was concerned about her, she knew, but she could not bring herself to lie to him by way of omission any longer. There was truly no knowing when he would come back, or if that was even a possibility any longer. If she was honest, she thought he was likely dead in a ditch somewhere, probably behind a saloon in some backwards hole of a town, far away from Cedar Fell and anything remotely called society or civilisation. Nancy did not want him dead; she had been honest in that regard, she would not wish death or disaster or disease on any human, but she longed to be free of him, burned to be free of their marriage bonds which had only made her miserable in the end.

Dark eyes skimmed her writing again. There was nothing in the letter she did not stand by, nothing that she did not believe. It was as close to the truth as she felt she could be without bringing up ancient history, opening old wounds, and so she hoped it would be enough to Arthur to understand that he didn’t have to ask after the man any longer, or worry about her waiting for a man who most likely did not want to come back just as much as she did not want him to return.

Steeling herself, she folded the letter and tucked it into an envelope, sealed it, and wrote the address from the front. Riggs Station. Where could Arthur be, if that was where he was collecting his post? Constance mused on that fact for much of the morning, as she packed up shirts for Mr Schneider and saddled King, her horse, and for much of the ride in to Annesburg.

#

_If he were dead, I would not know it._

Those words, much like Jamie’s had, carved themselves into Arthur’s mind after he read the letter.

It both perplexed him to think of a man leaving a woman like Constance Everly alone in such an inhospitable place and made perfect sense to him given the nature of men as he knew it. It only made so little sense on account of how he seemed to come from another world to the one he knew and the one the men he knew inhabited. Men like him, brutes who had more strength than sense, more rage than religion. How Nancy had ended up married to this Seth fascinated and horrified him and he didn’t want to scrutinise why too closely. It made his heart thud faster and his temper shorten, and both those things were already being tested by the gang’s escapades.

Nancy’s letter went with the first one, into the back of his journal, and he continued writing.

> _Met a nice fella taking photos of animals – Albert Mason, I think he was called. Kind and interesting and entirely lost and unused to real country, even though he seemed to love it. Trying to take pictures of all our biggest predators before they all got killed off themselves by the modern world. Should have got him to take a picture of Dutch._

There was a drawing of Albert Mason with his camera on the page opposite the entry, which continued: _He got robbed by a Coyote, but I got him his bait back._

Albert reminded him of Nancy a bit, actually. Same gentle manner, though she had a much harder shell in which she hid herself. Albert was all warmth and kindness from the first moments he crinkled his eye in a smile and shook hands. Nancy had to be thawed and it seemed, from her letter, that he had thawed her enough to tell him some truths. 

> _Dear Nancy,_
> 
> _I don’t feel betrayed. You have your reasons for your secrets and you are entitled to them but I am grateful that you have told me what all you did in your letter._
> 
> _Everly is a fool to have left you alone at Cedar Fell, least of all because it is dangerous, but because – if you will forgive me for being forward – it does not seem to be the life to which you are suited. You told me you were not in the mountains because you wanted to be, why do you stay if not for waiting on your husband? If he is a fool then let him be a fool alone, leave him behind and make a life of your own. Far as I can see, you deserve it._
> 
> _As for my whereabouts and health, I am safe enough for now and well enough for the lifestyle which I am accustomed to. Thank you for your concern, I promise it is well taken though it is not needed. Never been anywhere nor done anything I could not survive yet._
> 
> _Soon as I am able, I will visit._
> 
> _There is trouble near Annesburg, I hear. Keep yourself safe, Nancy._
> 
> _Arthur_

#

Nancy sat reading her letter on the front porch of the cottage. Balmy winds moved her hair over her shoulders, shifted her skirts about her ankles. She had waited to open the envelope until she had returned from Annesburg but only just; receiving a letter from Arthur has become a highlight, a bright spot in the monotony of things and she could not help but devour his words hungrily, starved for the gravel-sound of his voice she had only his handwriting as a thing tangible to cling to

Much of it blur before her eyes when she read that he would visit as soon as he was able, she had to go back to read what he had written before it, her body tense, fizzing with hope.

He was grateful she had been honest with him, that was a relief. He did not think she should stay at Cedar Fell, and she did not disagree with him. He thought Seth a fool which was also true. Nancy was relieved to say the least. As she sat on the bench, she looked out over the mountains with the letter still held between her fingers, the paper warm now thanks to her touch. Expressing that she had not been honest about Seth was one thing, but explaining the length story of why she saw still in Cedar Fell was another and quite possibly meant that she would have to explain to Arthur how much meeting him had altered her perspective.

Something about the unpredictability of his visits had made it a bit easier for her to cope with how easily time slid around her in waves and eddies. It made it a bit easier to wake in the mornings and decide that she was going to do something with her day, she was going to go out beyond the routine of feeding her horse, cleaning the cottage and sewing, she was going to venture into the woods and take down any new flowers she spotted, she had even started a small journal where she could keep a guide of them, where she found them and when. She had started pressing a few of them between some heavy books in the kitchen. Whether it was Arthur himself or that decision she had made to bring him back here, to stitch and save him, but it felt as though her eyes were slowly opening again after they had been closed for years.

How was she meant to tell him one thing without tumbling into the other? Without overstepping some bounds? It would be far too much, far too personal, she could not imagine Arthur begin terribly comfortable if she were to tell him how paper-thin and distant she had been before she had met him, before even coming to Cedar Fell, she could not imagine how she would explain to him that her problems had begun long before she had married Seth Everly, and yet who else was there to tell? Nancy found that for the first time in her life she wanted to tell someone something, tell them everything, she could not abide keeping it within herself any longer and Arthur Morgan was the person she felt she could tell, somehow her only true friend left in the world.


End file.
